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© (c) Matt Laur

Sommelier


Matt Laur

Handheld at 1/60th, ISO 1000, f/4. B&W conversion in Capture NX2.

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© (c) Matt Laur

From the category:

Journalism

· 52,878 images
  • 52,878 images
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A man who's Serious About Wine pours for the table at a wild game

dinner. Thanks for visiting, and for feedback.

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Matt, I have a special soft spot in my heart for wild game dinners and wine. I've had some wonderful times at Grouse Society dinners and Ducks Unlimited. This image is beyond words, at least for me. It is technically excellent and, I believe, expresses the deep moodiness and complexities of rich red wines and sumptuous wild game better than a color version. If I owned a restaurant that served excellent meat paired with great wine, I'd be proud to hang this image in my entrance. This is a classic!

 

Best regards,

 

Dick

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What's the light source, Matt? Besides the way you've composed and tightly framed the image, it's the light that holds my attention.
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Dick: Thanks! I'm going to a local Rough Grouse Society meeting/to-do in just a couple of months (my first one). One of the guys there swears that I'll make some helpful bird-dog-photography-related contacts. I have no doubts!

 

Tim: The room was (poorly!) lit with two basic overhead six-lamp chandelier-style fixtures with simple incandescant bulbs. You can just see part of one in the upper right of the frame. The light was lovely and awful. I made most of the evening's shots with off-camera strobes to fill things in a bit, but did want to capture the clubby-feeling light in the room, and so shot some with just prime lenses and higher ISOs. Oh, for a D700 in hand that evening! The host (a professional chef) likes that restaurant-feeling light (you know, the kind that makes it hard to see the prices on the menu!).

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Matt, getting some shots of grouse hunting would be great and a real technical challenge. I have a watercolor of a grouse flying through birch. Someday, with some planning and luck, I'd like to hang a similar photograph on the wall. Take a book of your shots to the dinner. You'll have no problem getting the hunters enthused...a few glasses of wine won't hurt!

 

Have a good night!

 

Dick

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I like this kind of light for dinner, too...but you haven't said how you lit this shot! Okay, a couple of strobes off-camera, dialed down, one sitting on the table? Or from above left? His right hand looks like it's picking up light from above left. I ask because it's so effective and, as you know, this is something I'm trying to learn. Thanks.
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Actually, Tim ... in this case I did NOT use strobes. The only light is coming from the room's dimmed lighting fixtures, which were above the table, high and right. If you look at what his glasses are doing to the light, you can mentally trace the angle of the light back to the upper right part of the scene. So this one was strictly "available" light - though most of the other shots that evening were done with one or two slaved Nikon speedlights.
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If I could get a shot this attractive with available light, I'd have no interest in using the strobes.

 

Living where I do, I also have to be impressed to see someone using a word such as "sommelier". Way cool.

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given the quite obvious difficult lighting conditions I have to say I find it impressing what you've got out of it. I know how difficult and challenging this can be and it says a lot about your skill, exposurewise and processingwise. Not a lot of people would have gotten such a good result. The atmosphere is somewhat like you see in photo's from the thirties or fourties and I find that very appealing. In short, I'm impressed.
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