Shooting a Steaming Cup of Coffee
This image was made to respond to a P52 conceptual photography assignment with the task of say one thing about one thing.
Concept
The concept I chose was to show that the coffee was HOT. To emphasize the hot concept I wanted a tight shot of the coffee with a bit of drama in the lighting.
Setup
The image was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a 28mm lens at f22 on a tripod. I chose the lens to be able to get in close and show the whole cup. I wanted to have a large depth of field so chose a very narrow aperture.
I shot this in my studio / home office / guest bedroom so I had to work in a tight space! I have a small, adjustable height card table that I got at Wal-Mart that I love to use for tabletop. It is great because it is large enough to work on with white and black cards, but not too large. I can make it low enough to sit on a stool in front and work on tedious and technical tasks and if I am working with a window I am able to raise it easily depending on the situation.
The surface is a black foam core board with more black foam core serving as a ledge behind the table to flag the light. I propped a 5×7 envelope in front of the cup with a small C-clamp to serve as a fill card. To camera right is a dark wood panel and the area to camera left was open.
For lighting I used one Elinchrom strobe in a 34” x 45” Photoflex Silverdome softbox behind the cup. This light was flagged with the ledge of black foam core propped against the back of the table. In addition I used a snooted speedlight on the lowest setting to light the coffee in the interior of the cup. The speedlight is visible on a stand in the foreground of the setup photo.
To make the shot I first used an empty cup and played with many angles and points of view before I found the exact composition that I wanted. Then I marked the spot where the cup was and went a brewed a nice hot espresso to make the final shot. Once there with my hot cup in place, since my camera was locked in the tripod I only had to find the correct position for the snooted speedlight to light the interior.
Processing
The image to the left is straight out of camera, with adjustment to lens profile. I took the image from Lightroom into Photoshop for a few edits. Hot coffee does need steam!
First, I retouched the handle to dampen a highlight that I did not like, then I added a texture overlay using another image, and finally I added the steam. The steam was created by using a soft white brush at low opacity to make wavy strokes in 2 layers and applying several blur filters to the brushstrokes and transforming their shape. I then selected the brushstrokes and in another layer used Filter > Render > Clouds with an overlay blend mode to give a more steamy appearance. So, it took 3 layers to create the steam, with a few filters applied within, adjusting opacity and masking to remove a lot of the effect so that it did not look too heavy. The final image shows my Photoshop workflow.
I hope that you enjoyed this demonstration.
