Watch out, here comes my first BTS post.
First and foremost, this is a personal shoot, not commissioned by anyone.
Recently I found a batch of this locally made gin (St. George Terroir) in a shop and since then I consider it my favorite gin. It has a very earthy taste, just like you would imagine taking a bite of some rich forest soil.
I used a friend's studio, equipped with #Profoto flashes and all the nice tools to create great pictures. Also I knew we had a charred wood piece and some moss laying around, which happened to be the perfect props.
The setup is as symmetrical as I could create it.
I used a #Profoto D4 pack with 3 Pro heads in it triggered by #Pocketwizard Plus III. On both sides of the bottle, maybe 20-30 centimeters far, there are 1 stop silks angled outwards from the camera. The lights behind them are 1x6 strip boxes with around 1/3 power. This creates a soft, even light from both sides and attractive, symmetrical reflections. I used the silks to soften the gradient from the feathered softboxes and create a larger reflection on the sides of the bottle.
There is a beauty dish with a grid and a diffuser sock above and a bit behind the subject, around half meter higher. This creates the fine rim light on the cork and the shoulders of the bottle. I used the grid, so the light is more directional and the sock to soften it a bit.
There are two black V flats set between the background and the softboxes to cut out the light which might hit the seamless.
The camera I used was my trustworthy #Nikon D800 with the 105mm macro lens, set to ISO 100, F22 at 1/200s.
There was a few hours of light retouching involved, mostly to get rid of imperfections on the bottle and recreating the closing tab on the cork, which got slightly damaged during setting up. The green color cast is created in post, to add a little more earthy/foresty mood to the whole image.