Fun with wine glasses and a hard drive

One of the interesting challenges in stock photography is to identify the next set of photos to take. When the weather is pleasant, exterior shots can be taken, but on cold rainy days, what better than to relax with a nice glass of wine?

The Demon Drink

This came from a misguided attempt to produce one of those shots where the edges of the glass are light and the center is dark to highlight the wine. I was balancing a piece of velvet covered wood just beyond my shooting table to get the black background and as I focused I heard a loud crack as the wood fell forward onto the glass and shattered the top edges. Interestingly this was a break resistant glass which meant that it held up pretty well and formed this interesting devil’s horn shape. My next trick was to attempt one of those shots that have blobs of olive oil suspended in water. This was more successful, and I used three flash guns – two with a light red filter, one with a blue filter – to try to get some interesting light behind the glass. I’m pretty pleased with this one:

Olive oil droplets

Finally, and not directly related, I had an old hard drive that had outlived its usefulness, so I thought it would be interesting to take some interior shots. Taking off the cover wasn’t the easiest thing as the screws had very complex heads that I had no driver for, so a drill was needed to get to the discs themselves. Then damaging them took some doing! I resorted to a punch and hammer to make the indentations and again used my color filters on the flash guns to try to add some interest:

Feeling annoyed with your computer?

At the end of the day, it is always best to relax with a nice beer:

Relax with a beer

Happy shooting!