Anthem to my favourite drink 😎
My first attempt was to do this in one single shot, but the beans turned out too small and the textures and colours didn’t pop any more. I also found the proportion between the mug and the bones not pleasing in the original sizes. So I decided to go a different way with much bigger beans related to the size of the mug.
The final image was made in Photoshop and consists of 25 single photos. I shot two dozen single coffee beans with a 60 mm macro lens and the coffee mug with the good old and trusty 25 mm f1.8 – everything with my OM-5. As this is a Micro Four Thirds camera the crop makes it a 120 mm and 50 mm equivalent in full frame.
Not all of the beans are in the final image but I have a second image in mind at which I will need more beans – so it’s good, that I photographed some more than needed for this one.
The beans were slightly raised in contrast in post and the highlights at the edges have been burned a bit for a more evenly look. The mug has only been desaturated.
Having aligned everything to a ECG curve I decided, that the image would need a vibrant background and I went for this yellow/brown’ish sunburst gradient which compliments the coffee beans and the overall feeling very well.