[Canis Vulpes]

After two other bottle and glass type photos I thought this would be easy. I started by composing the shot with an empty glass and using lighting from above set to decide the main light and lens aperture.

What follows is the development path and thought process that arrived at the final photo.

Unfortunately the brolly created a large artefact in the glass (pic1) and I racked my brains for something that would reduce this. After some thought I figured that the reflection was coming from the stem of the glass and placed a penny in the bottom to cut this off, this was unsuccessful (pic2). A brew later I thought to place water in the glass to simulate refraction of the beer in the final shot and it did help (pic3). More pause and I decided I needed a black flag to cast a shadow in the glass – then - The penny dropped ( no pun intended ) and I thought the head of the beer would do exactly that and act as a large diffuser floating on top of the beer (pic4).

The labels were then lit using a snoot with a second flash at ¼ power through a diffuser which cooled the flash artefact on the left hand side of the labels but did not eliminate entirely. Overall shot and second flash with snoot can be seen in pic 5.


The beer is not actually beer instead tea foamed using one drop of washing-up detergent. One pint was made with one drop then whisked to get the foam tight and beer looking – hope this looked like authentic beer and for those who don’t know Leffe Bruin is a very dark beer.

Finally if you work for BMI in the First Class departure lounge at Brussels (National) Airport then on my next visit I promise to return the glass. The glass is used so has some marks probably from other users and BMI staff!

Note:- setup photos are for illustrative purposes only and are lower in quality that the final image seen in our gallery.