How We Shot These 5 Cocktails | Food Lighting Tips

[Music] let's shoot some cocktails i love shooting food with the right choices you can take something from looking relatively average to absolutely mouth-watering and there are a bunch of skills and techniques you use that can apply to a whole range of subjects lighting and production design allow you to convey a mood a decade and build a whole world around a subject so today we're going to shoot five cocktails in completely different styles ones that may be perfect for your next client or project let's get into it so for our first shot we're going to be doing a very 60s shady motel inspired look something that's very popular now for like bistros small bars and even some food magazines for this we're going to be focusing on production design and lighting that really invoke a nostalgic vibe [Music] we've got a whole lot of props from our local prop house and we're complementing this with a lockwood style background for the table we've gone for an orange pleather to give it a very sort of like color contrasty pop it should look really good with the drake now for that classic single shadow coming from the glass we want to make sure that only one light is hitting the table you want to be careful with the positioning of your lights and if need be cut any spill with scrims now we're going to be going with fresnels because they give us this focus beam of light which allows us to get these very directional sharp shadows we're going to be using a few to light this scene so it's important that we can shape the light having barn doors is going to make that way easier building up the lighting we start with our directional fresnel from the left this is doing the heavy lifting and each of our additional lights are going to support it to get that long crisp shadow we need the light high and moderately far away from the glass next we'll add another fresnel from the left shining directly through the drink to give it a warm glow this works well as the drink has a cloudy consistency to top it off we'll add a room light that just catches the top of the ice giving it a little bit of a sparkle finally a third fresnel in the background will light up our paneled wall allowing us to control the brightness independently and give us a subtle radial gradient with everything sorted we should be good to film this shot [Music] for number two we're going to be shooting in the style of a contemporary food magazine think bon appetit or new york times to achieve this we're going to be using large matte geometric objects something like a plinth and some background paper and simple soft light that gives a nice diffusion over the subject in the background we want to make sure we're managing reflections on the product itself but also lighting up the background paper nice and evenly for this we're going to be using a roll of savage background paper in the color coral we're going to do an initial dry run using a glass just with a piece of paper in it this is going to mean that our drink is looking its best for the actual shot because it's going to mount in about five minutes down here when we're using background paper in this style what we're going for is a nice even gradient across the whole background to do this we're going to make use of inverse square law basically the further away a light is from a subject the more gradual the falloff is going to be science and stuff so in a practical sense we need to achieve distance moving the light further back and up which is going to create that even light the final thing for us to consider is depth of field when you're doing portrait photo or video outdoors you're wanting to use depth of field to create as much separation of the subject in the background but when we're working in macro and in product photography especially in this style we want to keep everything in focus and quite sharp we're going to bring our f-stop to about 13 mostly because that's how bright our lights are and that's really our only limitation here to keep this simple we're only using two lights on this shot a gemini one by one lights up our background from above giving us an even fall off and on the plinth and drink we have another one by one with a softbox creating soft shadows and highlights from the side while we're going to be keeping a lower contrast ratio for this image as a whole we don't want to entirely wash it out by lighting it from the front [Music] next up we're going to be doing a shot that is heavily inspired by sci-fi lighting so the key elements of this are going to be a black background some nice backlighting and a reflection of the product directly under production design is really important for how we achieve this look so under the product itself we're going to be using a black sheet of perspex it's important that it's new and covered with a protective film when you buy it because you need to make sure it has no scratches and not too much dust if you can avoid it in addition to this we're going to be using specialty clear ice so basically freezing it from the bottom pushes out any of the air and impurities giving you this really nice clear surface to look through we got ours from the bar society but you can get it from a local specialist supplier in a lot of areas of the world often in food hack videos you see them using acrylic or plastic ice which i don't love it tends to look too perfect and a bit fake for me and detracts from the overall image transparent and semi-transparent objects work really well with a bit of backlighting and that's gonna be perfect for this cocktail we're gonna go for a single source that's placed above and behind the subject this is gonna stream through give a nice glow to the subject and highlight some of the edges the glass when backlighting you can often have problems with lens flares because the light is facing directly towards your camera to combat this you're going to want to cut the light using something like a scrim a floppy or a matte box on your camera itself lighting for this is simple with a single led panel above and behind the subject with the placement you want to illuminate the glass but avoid seeing the reflection of the light and the perspex now that we've got our wide we're going to get our rotating close-up to do this we're going to be using a genie mini 2 and a product turntable you could also use a lazy susan but this gives us a bit more control so when you're doing a rotation shot like this you want to make sure everything is centered up and this will stop that kind of like left to right movement as it rotates around we're gonna be using a laser level to make sure all the centers of the objects are aligned for our fourth shot we're going to be doing a afternoon library type scene to create this look we're going to be keeping three things in mind soft motivated light complementary production design and depth of field so in designing this set we made sure our colors weren't clashing sticking to some very warm earthy greens of browns although we don't have many practical books green and brown are often found in old libraries so we can use those colors to really invoke those feelings to create some texture and make this feel like a real space we've used a dark wood bench top as our surface and then we've used crown molding on a piece of mdf that's painted green to act as our back wall these are going to feel a bit more real than just flat surfaces when it comes to lighting the scene we want to make it feel like it's in a big room near a large window or something like that so we're going to create some soft diffused light as our film we're going to continue this feeling when we come to light background using a piece of poly board to cut the light it's going to cast a shadow kind of like the light is coming in through a window and hitting a windowsill finally we're going to be making sure we have some depth of field in this scene it's going to make it feel like it's a bit more editorial like it's a real space and that we're not shooting it in the studio for this shot we're building light around the practical in the scene as not to create a hotspot on the lampshade we dim the light and added an led panel facing the glass to act as the rim light for our key we added a panel to the right with a softbox giving us our main source and then complemented this with the background light that's cut with a piece of poly board for the shadow when doing this you want to make sure your lighting is consistent in direction this is going to make it look like the main light is coming from that single source [Music] for shot number five we're going to be doing something very sunny and outdoorsy something you do for a summary add or post the key part of this is going to be creating some leaf shadows giving the illusion that we're in a very sunny plant filled environment to get these lush shadows we're going to be using plastic plants we want these shadows to be relatively crisp so once again we're going to be going for a focus directional light we want to make sure the distance between the plant and the light is greater than the distance between the plant and the subject moving the plant within this range is going to mean we can dial it in and get the look we want for this we're just using an avenger pelican clamp and a c-stand in addition to these shadows we want to create the ambient light that you would find outside from the sun bouncing around a whole lot of objects that gives it sort of a warm ambience to the scene to do this we're going to be using a large poly bounce on the right side of the object opposite from where our main light source is coming in this will just bounce some light back in and fill in a bit of the shadows when we can't use a bounce on the background we're going to use an additional led panel to shine a bit of light in there and soften out those shadows looking at this shot it's feeling a bit static so what we're going to do is right before we shoot we're going to remake it with some fresh ice so we get it as crispy as possible those nice sharp edges and top it up with a bit of soda water so we get a little bit of energy and a little bit of movement in the bubbles for this shot we're starting with our key from the left with some plants casting shadows across the table and to balance this we're using that bounce from the right we're using some backlighting to illuminate the drink and catch the edge of the glass and then another fresnel to cause our background shadows this is balanced by an led panel to reduce their harshness a little [Music] if you learned something let us know in the comments it really helps out the channel for more filmmaking and photography tips subscribe to syrup lab or check out the full article on syruplab.com education thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Syrp Lab

Views: 73,574

Keywords: Food Lighting, Food commercial lighting, Scifi lighting, Shoot vintage food, back lighting, cocktails, cocktails photography, film making, filmmaking, food lighting photography, food lighting setup, food lighting video, food photography, food photography lighting, lighting food videography, lighting tips, lighting tricks, photography lighting, product photography, product photography lighting, shoot food magazine, shooting drinks, shooting food, syrp, syrp lab, youshoot

Id: J0jawPFkaio

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022