Photographing a Vintage Wine in it's Natural Environment!

So this evening I photographed a 1990 Chateau Grangeneuve, which is a smooth red wine from Bordeaux and it was paired with tasty spiced and grilled pork chops with a dollop of delicious potato salad! The best part about photographing wine and food is consuming it afterward. It was delicious!

I used two speedlights to create the atmosphere I was after, a gridded sb600 from camera left at 1/64 power and a snooted sb700 from camera right set to 1/32 output. This combined to provide a nice intimate scene full of warm nourishing flavours and mouth watering grilled aromas. The camera was at 1/200s, f3.2, ISO 200, slightly warm flash white balance and RAW, always RAW. Speedlights were triggered via a cheap but reliable Phottix Strato wireless trigger system.

Mmm, another glass of wine anyone?

Photographing Artwork with the NIKKOR AF-S DX Micro 40mm f/2.8G

While the NIKKOR AF-S DX Micro 40mm f/2.8G may not be the ideal macro lens because of it's too short focal length it never-the-less certainly is a wonderful lens with tack sharp distortion free optics that are unrivaled at the price. Therefore it makes for a fantastic lens to photograph artworks like the painting below by talented local artist Birgitte Clark (who also happens to be my wife):

Here is a 100% crop from the painting:

What on earth does a "grid" actually do?

I was asked recently what the purpose of a grid is on a flash, and while I can explain it easily enough a picture speaks a thousand words so here are about four thousand words worth in pictures! (...and a little text)

First up a flash firing directly at a wall (with a framed drawing hanging on the wall) without any attachments whatsoever:

As expected there is a large spread of light across the entire wall in front of the flash. The flash is set to 35mm.

Next up the exact same shot but with a grid attached to the front of the flash: