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I love good wine, so maybe I sent out a telepathic message to Dominus Estate, the Yountville-based maker of exquisite, velvety Bordeaux-style wines made in the “terroir” style. For those who don’t know, and I certainly didn’t, this traditional mode of wine-making works magic with climate and soil to produce wonderful vintages.
Anyway, Dominus found me, and we quickly agreed to work together. They gave me three bottles-two to photograph and one to pour from—and a beautiful etched decanter to use in the shots. I loved the decanter, because it does such a great job of showing off the lovely deep purple of the wine.
Image may be NSFW.
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You’ve probably read it in this blog before…bottles, mirrors, anything glass is tricky to photograph. Glass reflects everything around it and can really wash out detail. That’s a big deal because you need to use at least four different light sources and modifiers to properly light just one bottle. That’s if your goal is to make the bottle look smooth and sleek and ready to leap off the wine merchant’s shelf into the buyer’s arms.
At my studio, we carefully lit the wine and took lots of pictures to arrive at the few Dominus had agreed to purchase. They were so happy with the results, though, that they walked away with double the number of images instead. And I ended up with all three bottles of $120/bottle wines as gifts. Whee!!!
