Guinness Shoot Part 2

Karl captures a series of images, adjusting angles, lighting, and exposure to get the perfect look. He demonstrates techniques to control reflections on the glass and highlight the texture of the drink.

Comments

  1. Hi Karl, why don’t you ever use a remote shutter release? Seems lot easier than trying to hold a reflector in one hand and reaching to press the shutter release on the camera or computer?

    1. Hi, because I usually trigger the camera from the keyboard of the computer as I’m shooting tethered. When it’s absolutely critical that I don’t touch or move the camera and if my hands are full then I will have an assistant either hold something or trigger the camera from the keyboard for me.

  2. Gary Stasiuk

    Karl.. have a question about beers in general. I am getting prepared to do a whole series of beer shots, including a reshoot with Guinness, as well as various cans, maybe a few bottles (I’m already pretty decent at bottles, but I may try a few different things) plus I will do some with a full glass of various beers, various beer glass types, with the cans or with the bottles, plus separate… the whole exercise to really push the bar up on my beer shots. In the case of the Guinness, we are taking the time to rightfully so, capture the turbulence of the beer… I get it completely. Have you done so with IPA or lager type beers in the past? I haven’t really seen that much in the way of pouring beer into the glass as a shot (video.. yes).. as, for instance a wine being poured into a glass.. mostly because of the way you generally introduce beer to a pint glass. I have seen shots of beer coming out of bottles.. near the mouth of the bottle.. point of focus being more on the bottle. I guess I’m asking if capturing this turbulence is something other beer companies want to see and you have worked on something like this in other situations.

    1. Hi Gary, I don’t think I’ve ever photographed a stout type beer other than Guinness? I have photographed for several different lager brands commercially including, the dutch beers Orangeboom & Breda, the Candadian beer Labatts and the American Coors plus a few others non commercially for my portfolio. With all the lager shots I actually just find any brand of lager that pours well and makes a good head and use that in the glass because no one can tell the difference, I remember I used to use Grolsch because it seemed to have more bubbles. There are also pint glasses that have a deliberate texture at the bottom to help seed the bubbles to keep them forming and rising and as you will see in another of my classes (I think it’s the pint one) I use a spoon of sugar to reignite the froth. I haven’t done any pouring beer stills though only the product with the glass sat next to it, for wine I’ve done pouring red wine shots which are relatively straight forwards you just need to cut the bottom of the bottle off so you can pour the wine from another bottle down that bottle to avoid the glugging. With respect to your pouring beer question it might be worth checking some of Barry Makariou, Jonathan Knowles or Tal Silvermans work to see if they have any references that are useful.

  3. Hey how about if we use point light source or precise lighting from above the drink to light the effect of gas as it might require less time on edit? Thanks awesome class as always

    1. Hi, you can certainly try it but I tried with a spotlight from above and it wouldn’t get enough light through the turbulence to be effective but maybe you will have better luck.

  4. Great minds think alike. Just before you mentioned using a syringe, that thought popped into my head.

    Watching the difference between what happens when the Guinness is poured into the glass and when the spoon is used to agitate, the pouring was more effective at producing turbulence.

    1. Yes it was but it was too difficult to get it to happen for long and in the correct place because the added liquid filled up the glass and wasn’t at the very front of the glass so we needed to use the spoon to solve those problems.

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