Shooting cider in the studio – advertising product photography in Kent
I love the English countryside. I love orchards too and in fact an apple tree dominates the centre of my garden. But given the weather when I was working outdoors just after harvest time this year, I was glad that I was shooting cider in the studio in Canterbury.
3Cs vintage cider is an award winning premium brand of cider produced in association with Sheppy’s of Herefordshire. The blend of apples includes old English varieties such as Harry Masters and Chisel Jersey. The apples are pressed and fermented to produce a rich and rounded flavour. The three founders of 3Cs cider – William Sitwell, Tony Grafftey Smith and Jasper Galloway – have moved from a hobby involving a second hand Ebay press to a professional product available in Fortnum and Mason. The new image will act as a feature shot for the website homepage and start to replace the older homemade shots.
Shooting cider in the studio involves many of the same challenges faced when shooting drinks and other shiny products on location – reflections, highlights and shadows. I’ve posted some before and after pictures below but the basic recipe equally applies to shooting cider in the studio or on location. The same was also used for the studio packshot for 3cs which I shot on the same day.
[…] You can see in the examples below the importance additions of the highlights to the sides of each product (to provide shape and what Mary Berry would call “definition”), the backlight to bright the beer to life and add low shadows to the foreground. The gold card is used selectively to pull the colour back in to the beer. The final set of images were straight packshots which you can learn more about here. […]