Every October, the Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational Barbecue Competition is held in Lynchburg, Tennessee (just south of our home in Murfreesboro). You may also hear it referred to as "The Jack", and it's considered the Super Bowl of Barbecue competitions. For the past three years, I have had the honor and privilege of being invited to be one of their judges. In 2011, I had a chance to meet Jeff Arnett, the 7th Master Distiller at Jack Daniel's and he was kind enough to sign one of the bottles for me.

So, today, I thought I might take the camera and try my hand at some product shots. I thought it would be a great time to get out the bottle that I had kept put up and shoot some photos of it.

Semi-technical ramblings: I experimented with several different things but I ended up with a 24x24 softbox with a Nikon SB700 speedlight mounted to the back of it. I triggered that with a couple of Pocket Wizards. The light was directly over the bottle at a 45 degree angle so that I would not light up the background any more than I had to. I raised the shutter speed to drop the ambient light and then took a small pen light and propped it up behind the bottle to shoot a little light into it from behind. I took a few different exposures of the bottle and then in photoshop, I masked the bottle from the lighter shot over the top of the background from the darker shot. The picture below was the result.

And by the way, I guess this is what happens when someone that's into photography sits at home alone with a bottle of Jack Daniel's.