When Vickie from Constellation Brands in the UK contacted me to do a shoot for one of their South African brands, Constellation Wines she emphasized the pictures were to be sophisticated but relaxed! My perfect brief! An opportunity to play with lighting while taking images that aren’t stuffy and stuck up!

Having a winery as a backdrop did not hurt either, when I arrived a quick scout revealed a store room full of wine barrels, perfect! Although the lighting was quite straightforward the trick was to not have my main light wash out the background, this is pretty simple when the background is far enough away, in this case it was less than a meter, my subjects were sitting on the wine barrels directly in front of the chosen backdrop, the other wine barrels I wanted the backdrop to be warmer than the foreground so I pointed a separate flash with a snoot and a full CTO warming gel at the barrels behind my subjects.

I really love using rim lights so I attached another flash just above their heads using a Manfrotto spring clamp (I love those things sooo much!)

In retrospect I should have had them put a temporary set of barrels about 2-3 meters from the intended backdrop, alas time was an issue and the barrels are mostly full and way to heavy to move!

What I did was get my main light as close as possible to my subjects, it did the trick. The next thing was to arrange my subjects in a relaxed but not posed fashion… nothing to it… they literally fell into place!