# Shooting water in product and advertisement photography



## AlexKoloskov

Want to share here one of our tutorials, hope it will be useful for the community:

This is a second episode (the first one is here) from the *Water in product and advertisement photography* series. This time we used the same tank and mix of distilled and sparkling water.


 The idea was simple: pouring objects into a water and shooting  through the water tank, positioning camera strictly horizontal. Because  we have used carbonated water, the tank must be 100% clean inside: every  little piece of dirt on the glass will attract bubbles build-up.
The camera was perpendicular to the subject, meaning  we did not need  very deep DOF, aperture was set to F10. 



It was enough to have full  object in a focus while blurring tank walls enough to hide occasional  bubbles on it. For the same reason was used 180mm Macro lens: longer  focus helped us separate the object from a tank walls.









Speaking ob CO2 bubbles, quite important how much soda well use:  have it too much, and bubbles will grow too fast and become too big,  leaving you no time for a shooting, the object will loose bubbles too  fast.


 The ideal (for our needs) mix was 70% distilled water and 30% of soda  water (no sugar, please.  With such ratio we were getting very nice  slow bubble buildup on the object. It starts from a mist-like tiny  bubbles covering all the object, growing for about 5 minutes before they  will start to popping-up.
Now, the lighting setup:











*Lighting Setup diagram (for those who do not see well in the dark*
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Bubbles looks the best when highlighted from the behind, therefore Ive used two hairlights from both sides.
 First (*4*) was placed form top-behind, second (*3*)  was on a side: no even or symmetrical  lighting if we want product to have a volume.
The ratio between these two lights, will be different as well: one light  should be at least 2 stops brighter than another: this way we ensure  the object wont look flat.
 The top light (*2*)  is to highlight the front of the object. The angle should be very  sharp, meaning no light spill on the background behind the tank: we need  to keep it dark.
At  first I was trying to use a Beauty Dish, but found it too big, light  was spilling on a background a lot, which made it gray.  Therefore 7  reflector with 10° grid was used.
 Background spot (*1*) was a most powerful light: deep blue gel with 10° spot required a lot of power.








The complete article with behind the scene video is on the blog:
Water in product and advertisement photography: episode two released!  Atlanta Photographer blog




Enjoy!
Alex Koloskov.


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## Irishwake

This is really cool. I like how you showed so much of your set up.


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## dubaifor

That´s such an awesome idea! Love it!
+971 50 896 80 42 - Francisco Fernandez - Dubai Photographer


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## timbearden

Awesome set up.  I've tried this before, but always had problems with bubbles on glass.  Good stuff to know, thanks.


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## ki_user

Great shots


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## juvenility

wow...really nice, an eyeopener for me : )


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## photospherix

love it!!!!! the co2 water was the part I was missing


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## honoryourlifeFXR

Awesome shots and thanks for showing the set-up! That was my favorite part of the post.

But I was wondering something. You have a string holding what seems to be a red chili pepper in the one picture. How did you get the photo without it? Or did you just edit it?


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## josh.kirtland

wow! these are great! thanks for sharing!


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## SpaceNut

Cool! A friend of mine and I used to do this type of thing. Thanks for sharing.


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## D-B-J

Thanks for sharing!

Regards,
Jake


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## clarkperkins

Really great work, thank you for the post


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## Flower Child

You are brilliant.


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## krisesch

This is really fabulous, I will have to try it out!


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## cnutco

Nice write-up!


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## Schramm

Love the pics and the tut


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## Gunner19

Awesome shot! Thanks so much for sharing


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## FoggyLens

way kool!!!


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## Brandon Whiteside

Amazing job. my favorite is the red bottle.


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## will-jum

That's awsome, thanks for all the info!


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## inaka

Excellent write up and beautiful shots.


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## Leighton22

Thats cool! Made me instantly think what else you could take pics of and how they would look like.


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