Excessive drinking is dangerous for the health. Alcoholic beverages should be consumed with moderation.

The last few weeks in Berlin have been amazing, with over 25 degrees temperatures and sunshine, it’s been the perfect weather to photograph some cool summer cocktails. I could imagine the shots - vibrant, energetic, this perfect drink you can’t wait to sit in the sun and sip on. Now I needed to figure out how exactly I wanted to shoot it.

I knew I wanted the drinks to be at a slight elevate dangle, to create a sense of yearning and desire. So I started off by drawing out some ideas, brief doodles to figure out the placement/view that would best help me create that feel.

Once I had a rough idea I started with the planning. The shopping lists were made, the colour schemes worked out, everything prepared prior to the shoot. Once all of that is done, I set up my equipment.

I placed the Picolite with projector attachment on the left side of the camera. I pointed it downwards directly on the bottle/drinks so as to create long hard shadows. It also helped to create beautiful light reflections in the glass as well and gave the shot crispness.

Next, I positioned a Siros 800S with the 120 x 30 cm Softbox on the left with an additional diffusion panel in front of it. This created a reflection on the side of the bottle/glass. I then added an additional diffusion panel in front of the Softbox to soften the reflection and to create a light gradient towards the edge of the product.

To balance the hard shadow and the reflection coming from the left side, I placed a white board on the right side and pointed a second Picolite with the Picobox on it. I decided to use the Picobox, a I was looking for a very well-balanced light source, without any big loss of light towards the corners, to create a gradient like reflexion and I knew that the Picobox would be perfect for this task.

A third Picolite with the fresnel spot attachment was used as a backlight, to add highlights in the bottle and glasses, as well as adding structure on the parts like the fruits and the cork.

So far, all the lights I used were pointed at the drink and as you can imagine the background was very dark. The light used for the background is very important, as this creates more reflections in the glass itself. Also, I wanted the background to be bright with a light gradient. To achieve that I used different coloured backgrounds and placed a Siros 800S on the right side, with a 120 x 30 cm Softbox without any diffusion on it.

But something was still missing, so I took a third Siros 800S with a L40 Standard Reflector- fine grid and pointed it on the lower part of the background. This highlighted & brightened the top part of the bottle just right.

With this the light setup was done. I started cleaning the bottle & glasses and then made the cocktails. For beverage shots you can buy plastic ice, which is great as you don’t have the problems of ice melting. For this shoot I didn’t have that, but it might be worth looking into as shots with ice are very tricky and getting the shot before the ice melts is not always possible.

And with that, it was a wrap. I did some minor editing and the shots were ready. Hope you enjoyed this blog and see you next time.