A few months back I got an email from Tasting Panel about a collaboration with Jack Daniel’s and Pearl Diver. It sounded like a fun shoot so I could not pass it up. They needed 3-4 final deliverable images of a cocktail and of the bartender. Lets start with a quick behind the scenes videos and then on to some photos.

Set-Up

Now that we have seen behind the scenes lets talk about it a bit. Pearl Diver has some amazing natural light coming in through the window that my diffusion is in front of. The problem is that there just is not enough natural light, also the natural light had to much fall off by the time that it reached the table. Also, the table was a touch to low to take advantage of the natural light through the window itself. If we put a roll of diffusion where I did we would solve the problem of not having enough light on the table because the diffuser would give us a bigger source, but the problem is we would not have bright enough light once we put a person in the frame. I chose to use a lighting set up that is really simple and really pretty for the setting. One roll of Savage Translum and a light with a reflector on it (I had not put the reflector on the light yet when I took the video). This gave us a really broad and soft source of light with a smaller footprint than say an Octabank. I wanted a light source that I could keep between the cocktail images and the bartender images as I was working alone and did not want to have to do a relight. I was able to make it work with this particular cocktail because it is opaque.

I used a Nikon Z7 and a 105mm f2.8 lens for the cocktail images. For the portrait images, I used an 85mm f1.8 lens. For the cocktail images, I wanted a bit more compression and to be a bit closer to the subject. For the portrait images, I wanted to have a larger field of view and be further from my subject. For the portraits, I wanted a more relaxed feel to the images.

The Images

Nick Bumgardner is a commercial beverage photographer based out of Nashville, TN. In addition to commercial imagery Nick also accepts editorial assignments. To get in touch with Nick and book your next photoshoot use the contact form.