Bottled Poetry: Capturing the quality of beverage bottles through photography & retouch

“Wine is bottled poetry”, according to Robert Louis Stevenson. And like all good poetry, wine bottles deserve appreciation – not only for their form, shape and unique features, but also for how they make us feel. As photographers, our challenge is to capture the craftsmanship of a bottle while evoking an emotional response and hinting at the flavours and aromas contained within. It is an undertaking fraught with technical difficulty, which is one of the reasons we enjoy it so much!

The thrill of the technical challenge

“I love shooting beverage bottles because, from a technical point of view, they’re really tricky,” explains our Global Head of Photography, Si Thompson. “Each one is unique because the glass has its own little quirks and ways of making it difficult for a photographer. On top of that, there are all of these fine details that the brand has painstakingly crafted, whether that’s beautiful foiling on a label or an embossed logo in the glass itself. These are all choices that have been made, so you need to make sure they are picked out.”

At Equator, we spend time identifying these elements of artisanal craftsmanship and thinking about how best to capture them. But it’s not just the finer details that matter; the shape of the bottle and the highlights that accentuate its form are equally important. It is a balancing act where emphasising one element can adversely affect another if the right techniques aren’t employed. “Sometimes photographers pick out the colour on a label and it looks flat, like it’s been stuck on,” explains Si. “This is why establishing a gradient in foiling is important; it adds shape to the bottle.”

In addition to focusing on the colours of finer details, photographers must also capture the colours of the bottle and the wine within. Highlighting all of these features can rarely be achieved with a single shot. Instead, our photographers work around each bottle in fine detail, picking out all of the important elements before taking everything to our in-house retouch team. By meticulously layering multiple shots to highlight different aspects of the bottle, they create an image that appears to have been established in one shot. “That’s what makes it such an art form,” adds Si.

Managing reflections and capturing colours

One of the most formidable challenges when photographing glass bottles is managing reflections. Our skilled photographers use lighting and reflection to their advantage, shaping the bottle with highlights and shadows while minimising unwanted glare – a delicate balance that requires technical knowledge and an artistic touch.

For example, we recently produced a range of creative cutouts for a multinational beverage company. The subject was an award-winning blended whisky contained within a beautiful green bottle with a foiled label and an effect that looked like a red wax stamp. In addition, the brand’s crest was embossed in the glass. Each of these elements had to be treated differently in order to be captured effectively, and each reacted to light in different ways.

“We wanted to showcase the crest on the back of the bottle, using highlight and shadow, while retaining the look of the glass, retaining the look of the liquid, and making sure none of the small details got lost,” recalls Si. “As is the case with beverage bottles, each of these elements reacts to light in different ways. If you use the same technique for each one you can lose colour, so everything has to be considered and adapted.”

From creative cutouts to social media shoots

It’s not just creative cutouts that present such challenges. Placing the product into an environment for social content or lifestyle imagery also pushes our team to come up with creative solutions to technical issues. For example, we recently created social content for a retailer’s own range of wines, shooting by grouping (reds, whites and roses) with the objective of establishing a unique look for each one. Even within these groupings, each bottle still had to be treated independently.

The creative vision was to create the aesthetic of a summer’s day, with dappled light running through the set, casting long shadows and reflecting the colour of the wine contained within each bottle. “It was a fun but tricky project,” recalls Si.

“We were establishing a strong look with huge casts of colour through the set, but we also needed to control how the bottles looked. It came down to making sure that, once the composite shots had been layered together, the final composition looked effortlessly natural. By considering the challenges of each bottle within the context of the environment we had created and shooting them accordingly, we managed to achieve this. It was such a buzz to see the final piece!”

Pushing the boundaries of beverage photography

While shooting beverage bottles is technically challenging, we also find it to be one of the most artistically rewarding niches in commercial photography. Our team takes pride in achieving that perfect shot, where technical precision, artistic vision and the brand’s story come together to create a visual masterpiece. Whether it’s a single standout bottle or an entire range, we embrace the challenges of capturing shape, colour and details, using our skills in photography and retouch to create imagery that is as captivating in its composition as poetry.

To learn more about Equator’s experience in food and beverage photography, get in touch, or discover our case studies.