Dr. Buckley's Cure for the Common Cold

[Mike Buckley]

The instructions say to "avoid alcoholic drinks." Oops!

Setup
A speed light is placed behind the subjects shining toward them and the camera through a large circular diffuser and around a background of black velvet. A speed light on the right side is shining through a diffusion panel held at a 45 degree angle to the speed light and the subjects. A flagged reflector is on the left side adding light to the left side of the box. A black card with a rectangular hole in the center placed directly in front of the camera eliminates the flare. The tabletop is glossy black acrylic. First photo made after tablets had become powder in the bottom of the glass and cloudiness in the wine had disappeared. Second photo made of tablets in the glass with no wine. The two photos were merged.

[Marie Hass]

Dear Mike,

Alright. i think you must be on vacation, snowbound, housebound or "working from home" and not telling work what you are up to.

Love the idea - looking for an empty glass and lip prints on the glass.....

Marie

[Brownbear]

It's perfect!

[NorthernFocus]

Wow!

[Shadowman]

I was expecting Buckley's cough syrup, which you can't seem to get anymore in the U.S. Alcohol and Alka Seltzer might be a close substitute. Nice capture.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks, everyone!

[ClaudioG]

My only issue is.........why is it half empty? Surely that cant be healthy? Shouldnt it be full?

Great image..great light

[bnnrcn]

Very nice as usual .

[Barbara Ponder]

Super image! You must have the patience of a Saint to do that kind of work!

[mknittle]

Mike, that is great. You are certainly a master of lighting glass.

[DonnaK]

Lots of work with outstanding results.

[Mike Buckley]

Continued thanks to everyone!

WARNING: You don't want to read the rest of this post unless you really want to learn every detail required to make this image (mistakes and all) or are looking to cure your insomnia.

There have been a couple comments about the amount of time and patience required to make the photo. This is the first time I have ever seen Alka-Seltzer in person, so I had no idea what I was getting into, as the details of my entire workflow explained below will confirm.

1. Hang the black background and the large circular diffuser behind it on the boom.
2. Place the camera in a position so the background fills the frame, no more and no less.
3. Remove all of the Alka-Seltzer tablets from the box, as I have no idea how many I'll need to use. Open the box from the bottom so I don't mess up the top.
4. Position the box, pack and empty glass on the tabletop as needed to compose the scene.
5. Adjust the height of the camera to fine-tune the perspective.
6. Now that the position of the camera has changed, fine-tune the placement of the subjects.
7. Configure the largest possible aperture that also keeps everything in focus. Confirm focus by using LiveView displayed at the largest magnification.
8. Darn! While viewing everything at such high magnification, I notice that the two top pieces of the Alka-Seltzer box are unattractively sticking up on the left side despite that the box is brand new and the top has never been opened. The empty box is also unattractively leaning toward the rear. I will have to remove the box from the scene to fix it, so mark its exact position using packs of Alka-Seltzer.
9. Carefully place tape under the two pieces in the top of the box, ensuring that the tape won't be seen in the image. Fill the box with coins my wife has been collecting; they will weigh the box down so it will no longer lean to the rear.
10. Return the box to its original place in the scene marked by the packs. Then of course remove the packs from the scene.
11. Turn off the light in the ceiling of my makeshift studio. Set up a continuous-light lamp behind the background and circular diffuser to properly light the edges of the glass.
12. Set up a continuous-light lamp to the right of the scene to properly light the box and pack.
13. Add the reflector on the left to throw more light onto the left side of the box.
14. Oops! The above step creates an unwanted reflection on the left side of the glass, so place a black card in front of most of the reflector.
15. The lamp on the right side is creating horrible reflections in the wine glass, so place a diffusion panel between the scene and the lamp to create an attractive reflection in the glass.
16. Nope, that doesn't work because too much of the right side of the glass displays the reflection of the diffusion panel. Position that panel on an angle to limit the width of the reflection.
17. I need to stop the action of the bubbles and I know the light generated by the continuous-light lamps isn't bright enough to allow me to use a shutter speed that is fast enough. So, now that I know the direction of the lighting is right, replace the continuous-light lamps with speed lights; the short duration of the speed lights will stop the action.
18. Take test shots and adjust the balance between the power of the two speed lights until the lighting that I want is being created.
19. The speed lights are taking too long to recycle. Change the lSO value to something as high as I think I can get away with -- from ISO 100 to ISO 800. Lower the power of the speed lights three stops now that the ISO has been increased three stops.
20. Take more test shots to ensure that the speed lights will recycle fast enough.
21. Add the wine to the wine glass and make a final test shot.
22. I've made so many test shots that the batteries in the speedlights are becoming depleted. (They weren't fresh batteries at the start of the session.) The speed lights are no longer recycling fast enough. Put new batteries in them.
23. I know from previous experience that the lighting setup will generate too much flare (any flare is too much flare!) even though the camera's LCD isn't displaying it. Use two pairs of clamps -- one pair attached to the table top and the other pair attached to the first pair -- to suspend in midair in front of the camera a black card with a rectangular hole in the center. Carefully adjust the position of the card so it is as close as possible to the framing of the scene without being included in the scene (not easy to do with a black card in an almost totally dark room).
24. Now that I'm ready to add the Alka-Seltzer tablets to the wine and that I'm doing it in almost total darkness, practice holding the diffusion panel with my right hand while pretending to use my left hand to drop the Alka-Seltzer into the wine glass and then immediately grabbing the remote shutter hanging around my neck to capture the first image. After three practice tries, it's as good as it's going to get with this klutz.
25. Reach toward the wine glass with the two Alka-Seltzer tablets in my hand. DARN! I bumped one of the clamps in the dark holding the black card in front of the camera.
26. Reposition that black card.
27. Drop the Alka-Seltzer tablets in the wine glass, this time without bumping the clamp holding the black card. Immediately make the first capture. Wait for both speedlights to recycle. Make the second capture. Wait again for the recycling to occur and take the third capture.
28. Check the three images in the camera's LCD, as I couldn't see anything in the dark while bright flashes going off were driving my eyes crazy: The images are awful! That's because the wine became cloudy immediately upon adding the Alka-Seltzer tablets.
29. Leave my makeshift studio and go into the house. Figure out a way to solve the problem. Things aren't going so well, so eat lunch. Maybe something will come to mind over a pulled-pork open sandwich.
30. Return to the makeshift studio intending to implement a solution, only to realize that the problem has solved itself while I was eating lunch. Now that enough time has passed, the cloudiness in the wine has disappeared and the remains of the tablets in the bottom of the glass are still generating just the right amount of bubbles! Hooray!
31. Take a few more shots to capture those nice bubbles in clear wine.
32. Unfortunately, the Alka-Seltzer no longer exists in the form of tablets; it is now in the form of ugly white residue in the bottom of the glass. Use the turkey baster to remove as much wine as possible from the glass. (Neither my wife nor I has ever used a baster to baste food. I bought the baster only for use with liquid in my makeshift studio.)
33. Add two more Alka-Seltzer tablets to the now empty wine glass. Carefully adjust the position of the one on the left by moving it with a screwdriver.
34. Photograph the scene that now has no wine.
35. Post-process the two images -- the scene with the wine and the scene without the wine. This includes making sure the entire background and the area of the tabletop devoid of reflection are uniformly black and that the tabletop displays no scratches or dust.
36. Move to my wife's computer, which is the only computer that has software that makes it possible to combine the two images into one. Make that happen.
37. I now have a wonderful image with box and pack nicely lit, great bubbles and clear wine. UGH!!!!!! I forgot about the ugly white sediment at the bottom of the glass.
38. Open the image in Lightroom and use its very handy cloning tool to replace the white sediment with bubbles.
39. Touch up the light on the two tablets to make them more three-dimensional and more appealing.
40. Now that I'm using my monitor again as opposed to my wife's smaller monitor, I realize there is more perspective distortion than I initially thought. Fix that while I'm still using Lightroom.
41. Oh no! Another mistake! There are no bubbles between the viewer and the Alka-Seltzer tablets and that's not realistic. Return to Lightroom, clone some of the bubbles and add them at a low opacity to the area displaying the tablets.
42. Wow! I never had any idea the process would be so easy!

[marlunn]

My only issue is.........why is it half empty? Surely that cant be healthy? Shouldnt it be full?

Great image..great light

Mike, great image, and Claudio, its half full, not half empty! the first dose has been taken

[Donald]

Wow! I never had any idea the process would be so easy!

Yeh, I thought it would be quite complicated to set up, capture and process !!!

Wonderful image. I love the vibrancy and clarity. That's so much to do with getting the lighting right.

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Mark and Donald!

Claudio, its half full, not half empty! the first dose has been taken

Actually, I never fill a glass of wine more than half-full. If it's a large wine glass, unlike this wine glass, I fill it no more than 1/3 full. My largest wine glasses will hold an entire bottle of wine, so I don't fill them even that much.

[JBW]

Smoking hot.

[Rebel]

Great shot, razor sharp.

I could do with some of this stuff right now!