Studio Still Life
I wouldn't neccessarily call this a really successful photo
but the story of the making is quite interesting. It was
shot for a competition that the manufacturers of Quorum
ran when they first launched the product in the UK.
Setting up and taking this photo took the best part of a week.
Having decided that I wanted the bottle to 'float' on water and
be lit from underneath, the first thing I had to do was to cut a
hole in an old print developing tray and stick a piece of transparent
perspex in the hole with putty. The hole had to be just behind the
bottle so that no light came up in front of it. Then I put a flash
light under the makeshift table and another over the top. I painted
the tray black and used black plasticine to support the bottle.
To get the light to spread smoothly on the back of the bottle I
stuck tracing paper on it. This was the first real problem because
as soon as I made waves in the water the tracing paper would get
wet and make a horrible smudge on the back of the bottle. Making
the paper shorter was no good because then you could see the edge.
So the paper had to be exactly, to the millimeter, the right height.
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