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Get perfect Martini splashes in the studio with just a couple of speedlights

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Liquids are a great source of photographic fun. It’s a topic which fascinates many photographers. There’s so much to experiment and play with. Splashes are particularly intriguing to me a a photographer, because you never really know exactly what you’re going to get. You might fire of 50 or 100 shots before you get the one you want.

That’s where this video from photographer Dustin Dolby steps in to save you a little frustration. With minimal kit, and a little compositing, you can often create fantastic end results much more quickly.

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How to photograph watches with only a kit lens and a speedlight

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Shiny male watch on a black background will certainly catch your eye in a catalog or in an Instagram feed. You can also create this kind of look, and you don’t even need an expensive studio gear to do it. Photographer Dustin Dolby shares his workflow that will give you the stylish, catalog-worthy photo of a watch, and all you need is a camera with a kit lens, one speedlight, and a few modifiers.

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How to shoot cosmetic photography packs like a pro using inexpensive gear

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When it comes to making high-quality shots with affordable gear, Dustin Dolby is full of ideas. This time, he guides you through a workflow of shooting classic high-key shots of cosmetic products and getting almost everything done in-camera.

He made these photos for Spela’s catalog. When you shoot a great number of photos, you want to make them as good as they can get in-camera, so you don’t spend an eternity in post. Dustin shares his setup and tricks for achieving the perfect look of these subjects, so you can minimize the time you spend editing.

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How to professionally photograph glassware with one speedlight and a kit lens

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Photographer Dustin Dolby is known for his comprehensive tutorials all of us can try out at home. After a series of excellent wine photography tutorials, he has issued the latest one – about photographing glassware with minimal gear, but professional results. You need to pour that wine into something, right?

Like his previous setups, this one also involves some pretty basic gear – a camera with a kit lens, a strip box with a speedlight adapter, a speedlight and a commander unit. He shoots three different types of glasses using very simple setup and shares some useful and clever tricks for photographing glassware like a pro, even with minimal gear.

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How to create a classic and moody photograph of a wine bottle

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Photography Dustin Dolby has been putting a lot of effort into his short series on photographing wine and wine bottles. Part 1 introduced us to the basic principles shooting such a subject with minimal kit and getting good reflections. Part 2 focuses on getting a richer, more bold, hero-like shot. A look that’s become very popular recently. In this third part, we see the moodier side of photographing a wine bottle.

Using a strip softbox as his background, Dustin shows how we can photograph wine bottles for easy cut out selection. The principle, though, should work well for anything you wish to cut from its background. Sometimes it’s easier to get things perfect in-camera. But at other times, you or your client may need that option to put an object on a different background.

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How to photograph wine and give it bold look using only one speedlight

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Photographer Dustin Dolby is known for his tutorials where he shows how to take professional-looking product shots with minimal gear. He guided us through taking fantastic cosmetic products shots, and photos of wine bottles that make you want to drink a glass of it (or the whole bottle). This time, he guides us through another way of photographing wine.  Instead of giving it bright and soft look, he goes for something darker and bold. Personally, I prefer this style, and it’s the kind of look that would go perfectly with strong-tasting red wines. This kind of photo almost makes you feel the taste of wine – and it’s created using only one speedlight and 4 photos blended together with some Photoshop magic.

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How to photograph wine bottles with speedlights and a kit lens

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If you’re looking to get into product photography, one of the things you’ll probably need to learn how to shoot is a bottle. Whether you’re photographing drinks products or not, glass is a subject you need to know how to work with. What better way to learn than with a bottle of wine? After all, when you finally get it right you can pour yourself a celebratory glass (assuming you’re of legal age).

In this video from photographer Dustin Dolby, we see how we can get great looking wine bottle shots with very little gear. All you need are some speedlight, your kit lens, diffusers, reflectors and a little bit of compositing. And it can give you some very impressive results.

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How to photograph a high end cosmetics product shot with inexpensive equipment

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Even if you don’t photograph products regularly, they’re great test subjects to learn lighting. You get to play around, experiment, and explore how light interacts with different surfaces. And you get to do it in a very controlled way. But high end cosmetics typically have a certain look to them that can be difficult to achieve with modest equipment at home.

Canadian photographer, and pretty good keyboard player, Dustin Dolby is here to help. In this video he shows us his workflow to photograph cosmetic products. And he does it with very inexpensive equipment, too. Just a piece of plexiglass, some foamcore, a speedlights or two, and a couple of cheap softboxes is all you need.

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