In the commercial photography industry there is a specialty known as a “pour”. This is a test I did yesterday. I think I went through about a dozen or so glasses of wine … shooting, not drinking.

The challenge is stopping motion but at the right time. There are certain equipment limitations which prevail … the most prominent is flash duration. Normally you’d think you can just set your shutter to as fast as you can but flashes to do not sync well when shooting fast than 1/250 of a second … hence the black half of an image … the shutter curtain.

The other factor that plays into this type of photography is the depth of field. The more detail you want to retain aka broader depth of field, the more you have to stop down the aperture, then the more light you need, then the longer the flash duration … leading to more motion blur.

The trick? Many small strobes with very short flash duration. This image is my second test. In my next test, I will be pushing the limits with greater depth of field. Maybe I’ll choose a Riesling next time.

Until then, cheers.

-Kyle