Splash Product Photography | Logan Photographers

Somebody gave me a vintage looking coke bottle a few weeks ago, and well, I don't drink coke, so today I threw some water at it! Let's look at how!

The Shot:

The Setup:

It's a pretty simple set up for a shot like this! I was using a simple white backdrop and a small sheet of plexiglass under the bottle. One light above the bottle (a 24x36in softbox), a light on the backdrop and a bare speed light camera left to fill the shadows just a little bit. Thinking back on the shot, I should have grabbed my large softbox out of my trunk to give a softer light (it was cold outside!). All the lights were on a low power setting to give a short flash duration and freeze the water droplets (1/64th to 1/16th range on the power settings should work). Below is a behind the scenes shot of the set up! Camera settings were 1/200th of a second shutter speed, ISO 100, and f/6.3 on a Canon 5D Mark III and 50mm lens.

The Shoot:

For the splashing shots I held the coke bottle over my fish tank and poured cups of water on it, and used a remote release to trigger my flash. Keep pouring and shooting until you get a good variety of splashes you can use in your final image.

After you've managed to get a lot of different options of the splash it's time to get a solid shot of the bottle sitting on your plexiglass to composite with the splashing water. I used the same light set up, I just brought the softbox down lower to keep the reflection on the bottle the same, and shot a couple images and you're set! The white paper I'm holding is to keep the liquid from catching too much light off the background and keep it dark and similar looking to the images with the splashes.

The Edit:

This is where it gets fun! To get good water droplets you'll have to shoot a least 50 images, but probably over 100 and then a solid shot of the bottle by itself. From there it's all about merging the images in Photoshop! Personally here is a how I do that:

-Import images to Lightroom

-Color correct the image I want to merge in Lightroom