How to capture professional whiskey product photos with just one light

Photographer Dustin Dolby is back with a new, no-frills product photography tutorial that its viewers have been asking for ages: whiskey. In this step-by-step video he takes you step by step through the entire process of capturing and editing a professional whiskey bottle product together with just one light.

Whiskey photography is one of the more popular subgenres of product photography, but like any food and drink photo, it can be difficult to achieve that beautiful glowing bottle look on a black background that you see in glossy magazines. Fortunately, you can get this type of photo at home, and you don’t need a ton of gear to do it.

As usual, Dolby uses simple equipment. An old Nikon D5100 with the kit lens, a cheap Yongnuo flash trigger, and a single flash in a tape box are all basic pieces of equipment at his disposal. Other odds and ends include a light backing and a piece of acrylic for its reflective surface, diffusion material, and a piece of inexpensive reflector.

The configuration looks something like this:

As usual, creating a finished product photo using just one light requires some composition. There’s no getting around the problem if you want to achieve that classic product look with various reflections on the bottle and glass.

To this end, Dolby created the hero photo by taking multiple images with and without reflectors positioned to the right and behind the bottle, and combining all of the various highlights and reflections into one bottle and glass photo you see here- below. Here’s the full set of images, followed by the full composite at the bottom:

Watch the video at the top for a detailed step-by-step walkthrough that explains every element of this process: from setting up the bottle, to the various reflectors and scattering materials used, to making up the frames to a final hero shot in Photoshop.

And if you enjoyed this and want to learn more about capturing professional product photos with minimal equipment, donate workphlo’s YouTube channel a glance. Dolby is one of the best sources online for this kind of work, whether you’re photographing glassware, cosmetics, or colorful perfumes.

Image credits: All photos by Dustin Dolby, used with permission.