Freezing Motion

I have included the black & white shot so you can see the setup for this picture. Using a 5 x 4 inch monorail camera is never the easiest of things, you have to peer at the image on a screen at the rear of the camera, the image is upside down, and you usually have to have a cloth over your head to be able to see anything at all. So to make it easier to focus the camera properly, instead of picking up the bottle and pouring the wine in the normal way, which would have meant the neck appearing in a slightly different place each time, I chopped the bottle in half and held it with a clamp. This way I could pour the wine as many times as I wanted without moving the bottle. Flashling has such a short duration (less than 1/1000th of a second, sometimes much less) that the motion of the wine is 'frozen' nicely. Two flashes were used one from above and one from below the white perspex sheet (see my studio lighting tutorial).

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