Josh Ross and His Gatorade Sculpture

This piece originally appeared on the PocketWizard blog and is shared with their permission. It continues from PocketWizard's first story on Josh Ross, an exciting shooter that continues to develop as an inventive conceptual product photographer. Here, in his own words, is how Ross put together this exciting shot featuring Gatorade.

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This shot was an evolution of my work with a natural splash caught on camera. I wanted to create a shape with the liquid. While out for a run one day, a Gatorade ad in a local store window caught my eye and served as inspiration. I was attracted to Gatorade and the lightning bolt logo because I felt like it allowed for a powerful story that really spoke for itself.

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Once I had the concept and general direction worked out the actual execution wasn’t too difficult. One of the biggest challenges when working with products can often be the products themselves and that was something I came up against on this shot. The label is very shiny and just about every bottle I found had lots of little creases from being shipped and stored. It may have been possible to fix in post, but it most certainly would have been very difficult. Instead I spent some time hunting at a few different stores to find one that was in good enough shape.

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Once I was ready to start shooting, I used a Canon 1ds MkII, Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L Mk1, a pair of PocketWizard FlexTT5® radios to fire the lights, a PocketWizard MultiMAX® with a CM-N3 cable to fire the camera while throwing the liquid, and a Slik 700DX Pro tripod. For the lighting of the bottle I used a Dynalite M1000wi pack with a Dynalite 2040 head in a Photoflex medium softbox from behind, a whole bunch of white and black foam boards, and a Dynalite 4040 head in a beauty dish from above. The lighting for the liquid is a Dynalite head in a Photoflex medium softbox with a grid from either side and slightly behind.The shots of the liquid were shot at a shutter speed of 1/4000, ISO 800, and f/22 while the exposure for the bottle is 1/200, ISO 50, and f/18.

A friend of mine recently asked me about the HyperSync® PocketWizards and what I thought of them. He asked if they had changed my workflow. I responded: "The FlexTT5 units haven’t changed my workflow, and that’s the brilliant thing about them. HyperSync has allowed me to continue to work exactly the way I always have, with the same gear I know and love, and it has added capabilities I otherwise would not have."

KEEP UP WITH JOSH: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr

November 2013

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