Uisge Beatha - The Water of Life
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andywightmanComment by andywightman: Hi everyone. Wow! Thanks for appreciating the photo.
We are exposed to a lot of high quality editorial imagery in advertising in the UK and as I was in the isle of Skye, a natural setting seemed a good idea. I saw the wonderful Glenfiddich bottle in my parent's kitchen and decided to use it.
Key to advertising is focus on the product or on the imagery associated with the product. Hence the choice of a natural setting (whisky being a natural product) and the long exposure (16 seconds) to provide the muted but sensuous background. I tried setting the bottle in seaweed and on rocks (Scotch on the Rocks) but it was hard to take a shot that didn't just look like a bottle of whisky sitting on a rock. Hence again the need to do something to the background within the constraints of basic editing.
The bottle is not as sharp as it should be. Perhaps this is due to 4 megapixels and the accumulation of water drops from the waterfall. In a pro shoot the bottle would be shot at 1/250sec or so in same setting ans superimposed in photoshop.
Key to this shot was a tripod. Everyone should have one. Other key thing was a 4x and an 8x neutral density filter. These reduce the light entring the camera and allowed a 16 sec exposure at f7.0. ND filters are an excellent piece of kit allowing long exposures in daylight conditions.
Glare on bottle was not result of flash -none used but the ambient light penetrating the woodland canopy. On a triangular bottle this gave a lot of problems (I've edited most of this and excess water drops out on the print for sale). Ont he comment about neatimage - not used. This is a simple shot using only a long exposure.
Thanks again for all the comments and congratulations to the other ribbon winners.
Photographer found comment helpful.