Product Photography for Liquor Barn

Through the app both chains offer on-demand alcohol delivery in the Louisville and Lexington markets. Customers in the two markets can shop the stores' selection of beer, wine, liquor and accessories and have their order delivered to their home, office or event space. Photographing bottles is harder than you’d think. Liquor Barn selected Hatfield Media to create powerful product imagery which puts their inventory in the best possible light.

The concept was fairly straight-forward—shoot a variety of products in a cohesive, streamlined fashion.  Commercial photography of glass and liquids is one of the more technical exercises as it relates to details. Shooting the Liquor Barn app images required precise control of setting, lighting, background, props, and exposure to produce an image that has detail in even the darkest shadows, crisp focus over curved and angular surfaces, and no burn-through of reflected highlights. Add motion and/or a soft, non-reflective, model, and it becomes an exercise in studio control. When it comes to alcohol and photography our team knows their stuff. We’ve developed innovative techniques to lighting liquids that’ll reflect the look and taste of each brand.

“We used a white background with a single image to ground the image in reality.  We wanted to make the image feel real - not composited.”, says Isaac Harrison, Hatfield Media Photographer. “Photographing glass objects is considered by many to be one of the more challenging tasks in commercial studio photography. Capturing glass without also getting reflections can be a challenging task.”

When marketing bottled beverages, clean and clear bottle shots are a crucial element. But photographing a bottle is extremely challenging, especially when it will be used on an app. It can also be difficult to maintain consistency across an entire product line—or from one vintage of wine to another.

The final result was a stellar collection of product photography which can be utilized across multiple campaigns in both digital and physical print formats.  Importantly our goal is to produce a final image library which not only showcases the products in the best light possible, but which is useful far beyond the initial campaigns.