Faux Absolut Vodka Ad

I have always admired the Absolut Vodka ad campaign that used to run in magazines worldwide some years ago and always thought of how I would like to try and recreate something similar. I think it is a study in simplicity embracing the "less is more" ideology while having an attention capturing visual impact. The first step was to find a current news topic that would grab attention, hence I settled on Brexit and the "hard" or indeed "absolute" nature that it entails.

Next step, purchase said product and relevant prop, in this case a bottle of vodka and a Union Jack bowtie.

I studied the lighting techniques that the original ads used and tried to "reverse engineer" it. I used three studio lights, one from behind the backdrop shooting through a snoot, and two from the front on either side of the bottle shooting through two softboxes and positioned so as to give the two reflections in the shiny bottle cap.

After metering the lights and setting up the camera I shot two photos from a sturdy tripod mount, one with only the rear light and one with only the two front lights, and then spent a little time on the computer editing and combining the two to achieve the effect I was after.

The final step was looking up which font they originally used in their campaign, download and install it and then finish off the advert with authentic Absolut punchline at the bottom.

Lighting setup pull back shots below.

Food Photography, with whatever camera you happen to have on hand...

I originally (many years ago) trained as a chef in South Africa and I was quite good at it (if I say so myself) but circumstance and providence led me along other paths for many years. However a couple of years ago I received a good offer and took up a position as a chef at a company here in Sweden. This has of course left me with less time to pursue my love of photography, hence the slowing down to a crawl of this blog.

At work I have been called on many times to photograph dishes for the company website and the requesting always comes when the only camera I have with me is my phone camera. I do not have the latest and greatest, but I have found that with my old Samsung S5 and the incredible Snapseed photo manipulation software for Android I can get amazingly good results. While the fine detail and colour management I get from my DSLR is undoubtably much MUCH better I think that at internet resolution the photo below is just great!

Bear in mind that this was taken, edited and published directly from my phone with only window light in between my normal duties as a chef. It is no wonder then that camera sales are plummeting and photographer jobs are scarcer by the day...

Wedding shoot in France

I had the opportunity to shoot a garden wedding in France and the couple were wonderful!

Blues Harmonica

Just another quick harmonica pic to get the musical and photographic juices flowing at the same time.

Newcastle Brown Ale - Photographed in Mixed Light

Popped down to the local liquor store in Landskrona today to fill up on wine and other essentials and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had a healthy, but expensive, stock of Newcastle Brown Ale. Best beer ever!

Of course once I got home I was compelled to photograph this delicious beverage, and what better place than in my home made pub.

There is a healthy mix of lighting going on here with the led lights of the bar on as well as some daylight from a window to the right and then a Nikon SB910 hand held to camera left pointed at the ceiling for nice diffused bounce light and triggered via CLS. I had a slow shutter speed of 1/25th to ensure the background light was captured along with the balanced flash to add the right atmosphere. The lens was wide open at f2.8 to blur the background and isolate the main subject.