When I’m not shooting some type of commercial architecture or landscape photos, I’ve been spending my time working with liquor. It’s great because A) I can do it from the studio and B) I can drink it afterwards. Those are two pretty damned big positives.

This shoot was cool because I envisioned this dark and moody, but relaxing scene in my mind. I don’t smoke, but I went to the cigar shop and picked one out just for this shoot.

So, how did I shoot it?

There wasn’t a lot to the actual lighting. The main light was on Camera Left shooting at the label. A second light was above the bottle shooting down. A third light was there to give a little separation on the background. That was the base exposure.

After the main exposure was captured, there were a few other exposures needed to light up various places on the bottle and give a little light in the glass. Below are the 6 main exposures used to create the final image. I think it took a total of 10, but those extra 4 were used to get the cigar lit and a few minor tweaks.