# Taking good Pictures?



## sewingmom (Dec 18, 2022)

I am new to here and New to this Bottle thing. We are fixing up an old farm house and I am finding Bottles galore In the crawlspace, in the walls, in the Barn, CornCrib and Smoke house. Not to mention just laying around.  These people didn't throw anything away, at least not off the Farm.   Anyway  I have been trying to get some good pictures of some of the different bottles but am having a terrible time trying to get the embosed words to show up. Any hints. Tried putting the white paper in the bottle Doesn't work real well.


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## Johnny M (Dec 18, 2022)

Try laying them at an angle maybe so most or at least some of the embossed letters and some words can be made out. Lots of bottlers here so it's possible we can identify the bottle from just partial embossing. It's a start maybe......I don't know about anybody else but any pictures get my blood going, especially from crawlspaces, etc. There should be some labeled ones I imagine if they were stuffed behind walls, etc. How old is this farm anyway?


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## Mailman1960 (Dec 18, 2022)

Johnny M said:


> Try laying them at an angle maybe so most or at least some of the embossed letters and some words can be made out. Lots of bottlers here so it's possible we can identify the bottle from just partial embossing. It's a start maybe......I don't know about anybody else but any pictures get my blood going, especially from crawlspaces, etc. There should be some labeled ones I imagine if they were stuffed behind walls, etc. How old is this farm anyway?


Just tell us what the bottle says, and as stated there's a very few bottles that someone won't be able to help you with not me but somebody welcome aboard


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## hemihampton (Dec 18, 2022)

I took this Picture Today. Pics taken in the Window seem to come out OK, Or hold on angle with natural sunlight on it. LEON.


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## Mailman1960 (Dec 19, 2022)

hemihampton said:


> I took this Picture Today. Pics taken in the Window seem to come out OK, Or hold on angle with natural sunlight on it. LEON.
> 
> View attachment 242468View attachment 242469


Now you tell, I took this one today as a before tumbling. Stay tuned.
You da man and nice bottles. You get good information here and some people even think they're funny.


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## sewingmom (Dec 19, 2022)

Johnny M said:


> Try laying them at an angle maybe so most or at least some of the embossed letters and some words can be made out. Lots of bottlers here so it's possible we can identify the bottle from just partial embossing. It's a start maybe......I don't know about anybody else but any pictures get my blood going, especially from crawlspaces, etc. There should be some labeled ones I imagine if they were stuffed behind walls, etc. How old is this farm anyway?


I can trace the deed back to 1912, When it was sectioned off from the family farm. We were told and the house was built in 1912. After we gutted it I believe there was an origional older home that was added on to in 1912. I have beed amazed by what we are fiding in this place. Found a rolled up news paper (of course no date) with a picture of little girls dresses looks like early 1900 style, in it was a rough made little dolls dress matching the style in the picture. We looked at it pictured it and put it back in the wall. I could go on for ever  LOL


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## sewingmom (Dec 19, 2022)

Mailman1960 said:


> Just tell us what the bottle says, and as stated there's a very few bottles that someone won't be able to help you with not me but somebody welcome aboard


I'll try and get some  better pictures I posted the ones I took that didn't do well. It says 
Allenrhu
Reg. Trade mark
        for
Rheumatic
Aches and Pains
Alle-Rhume Remedy Co.
Inc
Rochester, N.Y.  U.S.A.​I did see one on  here but It didn't say the same thing. I can faintly make out what looks like a large Diamond shape on bottom but it is really faint.


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## Harry Pristis (Dec 19, 2022)

My experience, yours may vary:

You can be as creative as you want to be with the editing software, but the following basic things will improve anyone's images:

GROUP IMAGES of more than two or three bottles are not effective. The more individual bottles in an image, the greater the amount of shelf is in the image. Viewers cannot see the details of a bottle that might take up less than five percent of the total image. Photograph a single bottle (or two or three), and post that image.

COLORLESS/AQUA bottles are best photographed back-lit by a diffused light source.  Hold the camera 4 - 6 feet from the bottle, best on a tripod.  Adjust brightness and contrast, then crop the image.  Hemihampton appears to have mastered this challenge.

EMBOSSMENT close-up of dark or black glass requires adjustment of light source, bottle surface, and/or camera until legibility is achieved.  An acute angle of bottle to light source is a starting place.

DON'T OBSCURE details of the bottle by pinching it between your fingers. If you want to use fingers to provide scale, support the bottle from below ... that is, on top of your fingers. To improve the focus, rest your hand with the bottle on a stable surface like a table or desk.  But, it’s usually best to avoid cluttering the background of the image with anything extraneous.

SCALE is important in some cases.  Provide measurements of your bottle in millimeters and inches for the widest audience.  Don't use a coin for scale; there are many foreign subscribers who don't know your coin's size.

LIGHT IT UP. Use as much ambient light as possible to reduce shadows...two light sources are a minimum. Ambient light is usually more effective than flash which produces flares.  Eliminate yellowed images caused by tungsten filament bulbs by switching to the new compact flourescent bulbs. CFLs come in a "daylight" (6500K) version that you can use in any (non-dimming) fixture and produce very little heat. Some LEDs produce a near-daylight effect.

ELIMINATE SHADOWS by elevating the bottle on a glass or colorless plastic stage a couple of inches above the background. Illuminate the bottle AND THE BACKGROUND in this configuration. There are numerous things around the house to use for this purpose, from scrap window-glass to disposable plastic food/drink containers.   

BRIGHTEN AND CONTRAST. BRIGHTEN the image in the imaging software until the bottle appears slightly washed, then adjust the CONTRAST until the bottle is bright and sharp and is a good color-match. Contrast can be usefull in making embossing legible.  Practice this until you get a feel for it.

CROP, CROP, CROP. Again, use the image-editing software to crop the image to only what is pertinent. Leave only a narrow margin around the bottle. The more of your kitchen counter-top in the image, the smaller the bottle image will be.

REDUCE THE FILE SIZE. You can constrain the proportions of your image to produce exactly the size that works best (I routinely use 700 Kb - 1.0 Mb for my images now). I save in JPEG format.


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## Johnny M (Dec 19, 2022)

sewingmom said:


> I can trace the deed back to 1912, When it was sectioned off from the family farm. We were told and the house was built in 1912. After we gutted it I believe there was an origional older home that was added on to in 1912. I have beed amazed by what we are fiding in this place. Found a rolled up news paper (of course no date) with a picture of little girls dresses looks like early 1900 style, in it was a rough made little dolls dress matching the style in the picture. We looked at it pictured it and put it back in the wall. I could go on for ever  LOL


Well just don't forget to look for the dump too! Stuff I'm the walls is fun but so are farm dumps filled with milks and canning jars and everything in between!


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## Mailman1960 (Dec 19, 2022)

Harry Pristis said:


> My experience, yours may vary:
> 
> You can be as creative as you want to be with the editing software, but the following basic things will improve anyone's images:
> 
> ...


I do everything wrong, I have some work ahead of me.


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## Roy (Dec 19, 2022)

Harry Pristis said:


> My experience, yours may vary:
> 
> You can be as creative as you want to be with the editing software, but the following basic things will improve anyone's images:
> 
> ...


 Harry,
Excellent descriptions and examples. 
 I, and I'm sure some others,  have learned a few things about bottle photography  from you here today. I only take pictures with my phone and will never be able to match yours but a lot of the basic techniques I believe are similar and I will be using some of them in the near future.   Thank you.  Roy


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## Len (Dec 19, 2022)

Trial and error--the father of learning and future practice. (For most.  )


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## Mailman1960 (Dec 19, 2022)

Len said:


> Trial and error--the father of learning and future practice. (For most.  )


I've been at it for about 3 weeks.
              Giddy Up!!!


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