Smoked Old Fashioned photo captured for Shakers Magazine
My assignment for Shakers Magazine, was to capture the extremely popular 7D Smoked Old Fashioned. My recipe for this shot was my trusty Fuji X-T3, smoke, and liberal amounts of natural light.
Smoking at 7D
Location, location, location! Does not just apply to real estate, it does wonders for making cocktail photos too!
“Gotta love 7D, besides making a great steakhouse, It doubles as a fabulous giant soft box.”
Seventh and Dolores Steakhouse, located in Carmel-by-the-Sea has been a hit from the day the doors opened. It sports that big city feel in the quaint, sleepy, city of Carmel. Along with a fabulous food menu, 7D has an excellent cocktail program. Among the most notable is the Smoked Old Fashioned, house-smoked and orange-infused Bulleit Bourbon with Demerara Syrup. Garnished with an orange twist and Luxardo Maraschino Cherry. From the first time I laid eyes on it, I knew I wanted to capture it. As luck would have it, my friend and I own Shakers Mag. Shakers is an industry magazine presented in a lifestyle manner. We cover the latest and greatest in the liquor, beer, and wine business. People, places, and things! A few issues ago, we did a story on 7D mixologist Carlos Colimodio the main architect of the 7D Smoked Old Fashioned. You gotta love 7D, besides making a great steakhouse, it doubles as a fabulous giant soft box. The entire interior is basically white with splashes and garnishes of greys and blacks. Large, tall windows cover most of the building. I decided I would capture the Smoked Old Fashioned mid-afternoon, at that time the sun was low enough to come pouring into 7D. My gear to capture this was pretty simple, my Fujifilm X-T3 with the XF 50-140 2.8 zoom lens, on-camera flash and a 4-way diffuser/reflector. The main role was played by the mid-afternoon sun as I used it to back light the cocktail. As I mentioned earlier, 7D is basically a giant soft box so I used this to my advantage by bouncing light off the walls behind me, providing just enough light to complete the initial capture of the image. For those of you that don't know me, I taught 14 years of Photoshop and the image was completed with some soft selections and some basic dodging and burning. The entire shoot took about 20 minutes with an additional 20-30 minutes of post in Photoshop.
If you ever find yourself in Carmel-by-the-Sea, don't be shy, reach out to me and lets talk shop at 7D over the Smoked Old Fashioned.
To see a little more of my work, please visit Shakersmag.com
Manny Espinoza is a photographer located in Carmel-by-the-Sea, on the Monterey Peninsula. He is available for hire, specializing in event, corporate, product, food, lifestyle, studio and portrait work.