ITP - BILLBOARD - PHOTO SHOOTS

A couple of weeks ago, as planned, I started shooting for this project. I had several different ideas, so I needed to shoot all of them, before I can finally decide on something. 
One of my ideas was to show the flavour profile of the whiskey inside the "crystal ball". I did that, but it just didn't work as a final product. The fruits that made up the flavour of the whiskey just didn't seem appealing to the whiskey audience. 

Below, I'm going to post some rough draft that I've made for the idea. I shot the fruits separately, on a white backdrop and against wood. The fruits images weren't bad per say, but the final comp just didn't work. 

Later, I shot the whiskey. I used a small LED light, with CTO gel, rolled several times, for a strong orange colour cast. I tried shooting the whiskey with the spherical ice, but it was melting too fast, so I had to switch to the crystal ball. That way, I can pour the amount of whiskey that I want and it won't change. The glass itself was light with a small battery operated ring light. During the shoot, I got the idea to use the ring light to simulate a rising sun in the background. Japan - the country of the rising sun. It fit well with the theme.  

After the shoot, I realised that I like different elements light in a different way. For example the light on the hand from the previous shoot was very nice and created a nice mood, but it definitely didn't work for the glass, simply because it was too close and overexposed everything. I created a new plan. I was going to comp every element separately. 

BTS of shoot below

The next shoot I was prepared. I put the camera on a tripod, portrait mode and with a grid on the display, so i can always frame things the same way. The background was lit the same way, however, this time I could comp it. Lit with the same LED light with orange gel, but this time I moved it so I could create a centre that with a higher exposure and then have a fall off towards the edges. The hand was light the same way, with the glass in hand and the ring light behind it, but then I shot the glass separately, lighting it from different sides. I also took three images of the ring light, close to the camera, midway through and close to the background. All in all, it was 7 images comped together. Three for the background, ring light, hand and two glass shots. 

I was getting closer, but this still wasn't "it". I like everything in the shot, apart from the whiskey... which hey, no big deal, I mean, it's only a whiskey ad right. Because the glass was shot in the same light as everything else, aka, dark and moody, the camera was changing the natural colour of the whiskey. So I decided to reshoot just the glass, in a separate, studio-like environment. I shot it against a white backdrop. Lit at 45 degrees from the sides with two Elinchrom 300s at max power, pointing away from the subject, with soft light bouncing back. Also because I was shooting during the day, next to a window, I had a little highlight on the glass, that I removed by putting a towel on top of the backdrop (photo below for explanation).

I comped everything together and things are starting to look like something. I'm going to reshoot the glass again, without the crystal ball and then comp it with the previous one, so I can get a non-see-through look for the whiskey, with a half-sphere on top. I also found an illustration of mount fuji, traced the shape and used it to create a highlight on the "ice".

Below is a BTS with my assistant. 

All done now! I reshot the glass. TOP TIP: I used Angostura Bitters in the whiskey to add a more vivid colour, without post-production. I comped just the whiskey in my final image, I blended things a bit better and I believe I am now done with the image. 

Lastly, because the main focus is in the middle of my image and everything fades to black, I didn't worry about composition too much (for InDesign). Now that I am done, I simply added a colour adjustment layer, increased the canvas to 300% width and 200% height ( it was shot in portrait) and now I have an image that I can move around in indesign, without worrying about the borders and placement of the glass.