Many people have been asking me how I shot the Breaking Bad Walter White Pint Glass photo. The setup for this photo is very simple and I got an idea for it from Laya Gerlock's work and his lighting techniques.

Background and bokeh

I crumpled aluminum foil (lots of it) and attached it to a couple of foam boards, which I then put against the wall.  In order to get the nice bokeh effect of light reflecting from the foil, I used Nikkor 50mm f1.4 lens and I shot the photo in f1.4.

Lighting

I used only one speedlight, Nikon SB-700 with a blue gel on it. I used Phottix Odin TTL to trigger the flash manually with 1/64 power. The power of the flash will vary depending how far the subject and the background are from the camera.

Because the subject is a glass, the light goes through it quite nicely and there is no need for extra light.

Surface and the subject

The glass stands on a white 24"x24" acrylic sheet and the blue effect (and the reflection) comes entirely from the speedlights (no photoshop used). I put some water in the glass and added blue and green food coloring for the effect.

Editing

There is almost no editing, only small Lightroom processing, like cropping, little bit of vignette and clarity adjustments. That's all!

Exif Info

Camera: Nikon D7000

ISO 200

Aperture f1.4

Shutter 1/60 sec