Harry Pristis
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If you have some bottles (or other collectibles) of which you are proud, maybe you should photograph them. Posting images to a forum such as this one may provide more than distraction or amusement. Other collectors may offer information to increase your knowledge, thereby increasing your enjoyment of your collectible. But that may not be the best reason to make good images of your bottles.
It is provident to photograph your collections in case of disaster -- wildfire, house fire, tornado, earthquake, theft, vandalism, etc. -- in order to make an insurance claim or to recover your treasures. These images should be kept on a transportable flash drive or be stored off-premises.
This is my experience, yours may vary:
You can be as creative as you want to be with image-editing software, but the following basic things can improve anyone's images:
GROUP IMAGES of more than two or three bottles are not as impactful as images of individual bottles. The more bottles in an image, the greater the amount of shelf is in the image. Viewers cannot see the details of a bottle that might take up less than five percent of the total image. Photograph a single bottle (or two or three), and post that image.
COLORLESS/AQUA bottles are best photographed back-lit by a diffused light source. Hold the camera 4 - 6 feet from the bottle, best on a tripod. Adjust brightness and contrast, then crop the image.
EMBOSSING close-up of embossed dark or black glass requires adjustment of light source, bottle surface, and/or camera until legibility is achieved. An acute angle of bottle to light source is a starting place.
DON'T OBSCURE details of a small bottle by pinching it between your fingers. If you want to use fingers to provide scale, support the bottle from below ... that is, on top of your fingers. To improve the focus, rest your hand with the bottle on a stable surface like a table or desk. But, it’s usually best to avoid cluttering the background of the image with anything extraneous. Don't photograph a tranparent bottle against a patterned background.
SCALE may be important in some cases. Provide measurements of your bottle in millimeters and inches for the widest audience. Don't use a coin for scale; there may be foreign subscribers who don't know your coin's size.
LIGHT IT UP. Use as much ambient light as possible to reduce shadows...two light sources are a minimum. Ambient light is usually more effective than flash which may produce flares. Eliminate yellowed images caused by tungsten filament bulbs by switching to near-daylight LED bulbs or compact flourescent bulbs. CFLs come in a "daylight" (6500K) version that you can use in any fixture and produce very little heat. Some LEDs produce a near-daylight effect.
ELIMINATE SHADOWS by elevating the bottle on a glass or colorless plastic stage a couple of inches above the background. Illuminate the bottle AND THE BACKGROUND in this configuration. There are numerous things around the house to use for this purpose, from scrap window-glass to water tumblere to disposable plastic food/drink containers.
BRIGHTEN AND CONTRAST. BRIGHTEN the image in the imaging software until the bottle appears slightly washed, then adjust the CONTRAST until the bottle is bright and sharp and is a good color-match. Contrast can be useful in making embossing legible. Practice this until you get a feel for it.
CROP, CROP, CROP. Again, use the image-editing software to crop the image to only what is pertinent. Leave only a narrow margin around the bottle. The more of your kitchen countertop in the image, the smaller the bottle image will be.
REDUCE THE FILE SIZE. You can constrain the proportions of your image to produce exactly the size that works best (I routinely use 1.0 Mb - 2.0 Mb for my images now). I save in JPEG format.
It is provident to photograph your collections in case of disaster -- wildfire, house fire, tornado, earthquake, theft, vandalism, etc. -- in order to make an insurance claim or to recover your treasures. These images should be kept on a transportable flash drive or be stored off-premises.
This is my experience, yours may vary:
You can be as creative as you want to be with image-editing software, but the following basic things can improve anyone's images:
GROUP IMAGES of more than two or three bottles are not as impactful as images of individual bottles. The more bottles in an image, the greater the amount of shelf is in the image. Viewers cannot see the details of a bottle that might take up less than five percent of the total image. Photograph a single bottle (or two or three), and post that image.
COLORLESS/AQUA bottles are best photographed back-lit by a diffused light source. Hold the camera 4 - 6 feet from the bottle, best on a tripod. Adjust brightness and contrast, then crop the image.
EMBOSSING close-up of embossed dark or black glass requires adjustment of light source, bottle surface, and/or camera until legibility is achieved. An acute angle of bottle to light source is a starting place.
DON'T OBSCURE details of a small bottle by pinching it between your fingers. If you want to use fingers to provide scale, support the bottle from below ... that is, on top of your fingers. To improve the focus, rest your hand with the bottle on a stable surface like a table or desk. But, it’s usually best to avoid cluttering the background of the image with anything extraneous. Don't photograph a tranparent bottle against a patterned background.
SCALE may be important in some cases. Provide measurements of your bottle in millimeters and inches for the widest audience. Don't use a coin for scale; there may be foreign subscribers who don't know your coin's size.
LIGHT IT UP. Use as much ambient light as possible to reduce shadows...two light sources are a minimum. Ambient light is usually more effective than flash which may produce flares. Eliminate yellowed images caused by tungsten filament bulbs by switching to near-daylight LED bulbs or compact flourescent bulbs. CFLs come in a "daylight" (6500K) version that you can use in any fixture and produce very little heat. Some LEDs produce a near-daylight effect.
ELIMINATE SHADOWS by elevating the bottle on a glass or colorless plastic stage a couple of inches above the background. Illuminate the bottle AND THE BACKGROUND in this configuration. There are numerous things around the house to use for this purpose, from scrap window-glass to water tumblere to disposable plastic food/drink containers.
BRIGHTEN AND CONTRAST. BRIGHTEN the image in the imaging software until the bottle appears slightly washed, then adjust the CONTRAST until the bottle is bright and sharp and is a good color-match. Contrast can be useful in making embossing legible. Practice this until you get a feel for it.
CROP, CROP, CROP. Again, use the image-editing software to crop the image to only what is pertinent. Leave only a narrow margin around the bottle. The more of your kitchen countertop in the image, the smaller the bottle image will be.
REDUCE THE FILE SIZE. You can constrain the proportions of your image to produce exactly the size that works best (I routinely use 1.0 Mb - 2.0 Mb for my images now). I save in JPEG format.
