Sagamore Spirit Calvados Finish

Creating content with the Sagamore Spirit team is always fun! Over the years, I have been able to try new techniques and approaches while shooting their products and I have found this very rewarding for my personal development. This time, we were shooting one of their best finishes, and my personal favorite (thus far), Calvados finish. This finish gives Sagamore’s rye whiskey notes of baked apples, cinnamon, and honey from French apple brandy casks!

Below are a few of my favorite images and a couple behind the scenes shots.

SHOT WITH

Sony A7R4, Sony 24-70mm f/2.8, Sony 70-200mm f/2.8, 1 Elinchrom D-Lite RX4 & Rotalux 135cm Octabox.

For this shoot I decided to bring my new Rotalux 135mm Octabox. This thing is massive! While I had tested it at home and at another shoot previously, I found that the output of this light modifier can change drastically depending on how you position it and the room you have to work with. You can see a side by side comparison below of natural light (left) vs. flash using the octabox (right) below:

It is pretty hard for me to pick between the two. I think natural light is a great way to showcase an environment, but sometimes using a bit of fill to highlight certain parts of an image is needed. Between the two, I prefer the image with flash fill in this case. I like how the octabox softens the light while still keeping some of the natural light in the scene. Being picky, I think adding a second flash to the right of the subjects would have complimented the scene a bit more by adding a rim of light and reducing the dark contrasts on their faces.