Original subtitles

The first brand that we're going to work with is called stumpies.

And they're local.

And I really like this story.

It's a husband and wife that have owned this farm.

It's actually the 8th generation in this family to own the farm, so they're

ingrained there's history there.

But they were kind of evaluating their life and where they really wanted to

be.

And they decided they wanted to be in the Bourbon game, that they wanted to

grow their own grain, mashed their own mash and make their own whiskey from

grain to glass.

They could control the process.

So they bought their first distillery, had it shipped out from Colorado,

pieced it together, and just began this journey.

So I love the story from that from that point of view.

We also took a look at their images when we first found out about them, and

they really need some help.

This is a great example of how someone just grabs some images for them, kind

of shine among them on gray, and they live on the website in both black and

white.

And it just doesn't work.

It really truly Falls apart.

So we want to solve that problem for them.

We're going to shoot these bottles on black and then reverse it, and quickly

shoot it on white

and give them heroic,

great images that are going to help drive the brand.

Before we even get into that, though, we have

some issues we need to work around with with stumpies.

And that is the fact that the labels

are not where I want them to be.

They're

put on in a manner, first of all,

where it's not exactly where it should be.

The seam on this bottle

is going right down behind the label

and in back that's not where I want it.

I always want the seams to be on the sides

so I can hide them a lot easier.

In the right dead middle.

It really causes some problems, not only in retouching, but you get a weird

gradient because the glass

has a variance as it comes into that molded.

So the gradients just get a little bit more difficult to deal with.

That's why I like to put them on the side to make it cleaner.

So let's start with my typical process, which is to get a good razor blade

and go ahead and remove the back label.

Because remember, if I'm lighting this bottle and I've got light coming from

behind, that back label is doing nothing but casting a big shadow, just

an absolute black spot with no light.

That completely tanks.

The bottle that's one of the things that drives me

up the wall when I see images where people have not removed the back label.

And you can see all that junk it's terrible.

So you've got to do that first.

Now there are a couple ways to go about dealing with labels on the back.

So in this particular case, I actually want to remove all the labeling.

I want to get the front label off.

I want to get the back label off,

even the neck label, because I want to reposition everything so the seams are

on the side.

That's something to absolutely look for.

I also want to show you a trick.

If you've got to work with only the front label.

If the client hasn't given you a set of hero labels and you're stuck,

there's a way to get the back label off without ruining the front.

It's a really good little trick.

But first

we're going to try to actually go ahead and take this label off.

Now I have done some experimenting with this, and this label is really, really difficult.

If you look,

I am actually

really struggling

to get this label off.

The glue is tough.

It's really on there.

Sometimes you can get a corner and you can just start to peel.

But in this case,

the label's going to shred, it's going to completely come off, and I'm going

to have nothing but tears.

There are a couple things that I'd like to do.

If the label's coming off in a decent fashion.

I want to start from the bottom up.

I want to actually scrape towards myself

that slows me down, and make sure that I'm doing it in a clean fashion.

When I go the opposite way,

I tend to actually apply more pressure.

And you can go faster.

You can wind up hitting the razor blade down on your desk, and it can turn into

your hand and can really cause bleeding.

Not good.

So if you can kind of scrape towards yourself

with a label like this, it is just not going to come off at all.

Every little corner is going to peel.

It's going to completely gum up my razor blade.

It's going to be a problem.

So there's a trick.

Before I get to that,

notice that I've kept the plastic on the top.

If I have to retain this front label and the top label, I'm going to do

everything I can to protect that so I don't ruin it.

I don't want water.

I don't want anything to get on this front label as I'm trying to remove it.

But I am going to put it in water.

So I have this really shallow

baking pan here, and I'm letting the back of the bottle rest in it.

I don't want that water to get on the front, because if I get the water in

the front, I've ruined the label.

I've got to get a new bottle.

I've got to start over.

And now remember, this happens in the case where you cannot get hero labels,

right?

When you don't have the ability to place new labels, and you have to use

existing, this is the way to do it.

So I'm going to soak that back label, and I'm going to let it sit for a few minutes.

I'm just going to roll it ever so gently,

and I'm also resting it against the edge.

I'm trying to prevent it from rolling.

I don't want that go whoop.

And then cover the front label, because then I'm a mess.

It's not going to work,

ok?

While that bottle is resting in the water, let's go to one that I've

actually already prepared.

And you can see what a difference this makes.

The back is completely clean.

We've gotten off all the residue.

All the label it's nice and clean, which means I'm not going to have

anything blocking light coming through.

I'm going to have a good glow that's coming through my liquid.

I have a new label on the front.

I've lined it up so that the seams, the edges, are on the side.

That's going to give me a nice clean face to put the new label on.

And we've put a new neck label on.

Now, again, I've tried to line everything up nice and straight.

If I didn't get it perfect, when I'm on set, I can actually shoot for the main

body of the bottle, and I can do a slight rotation to get the neck label.

And then in post, we can just merge those two together, and we'll have a

nice straight line between the two labels, which is what we want to do.

We want to present this in its best

most clean fashion.

These things are hand applied, so we try to get imperfect, but

there's always room for a little bit of human air.

So that's going to be our hero bottle.

And we've gone ahead and taken off the plastic, as not something I ever want

to have on a photograph.

Every once in a while see somebody photograph it with the plastic on.

Thanks me.

Nuts.

Let's see how this guy's doing.

Now,

that should have soaked up a good amount of water, and it should be

significantly easier

to scrape off.

I could use a little bit more time,

but you can see that I'm able to get in there and dig this out better.

This is just one of those labels.

That's really going to take time.

You can see how it's coming off in just pieces, and it's kind of gumming up my

razor blade.

So what I want to do, I want to grab the razor blade,

and I want to pull

away from the edge and get that glue off, so I can go back at it and

continue to take more off.

It's just a process.

It's much better down here,

you can see I'm getting through that much, much better to take it off,

and it's a lot easier.

I also tend to pull hunks off, keep it out of the way,

and just take a little time to go at it.

I try to get as much glue off as I can with the razor blade.

I'm going to have to go back at this with goof off to get the residue off.

But

goof off

kind of breaks down that glue makes it kind of gummy and almost spreads it

around.

So the more I can get off with the razor blade,

the cleaner I'm going to have it when I go to the goof off process.

Ok?

Now, I've gotten as much glue off as I can with the rage of blood.

You can see there's still a ton of it just sticking.

There's a bunch of residue left.

So that's when we turn our friend goof off,

or a citrus cleaner, or anything that is made to get off glue,

we're going to soak a little on a paper towel.

Now, again, I don't want to just pour it onto the bottle, because it's going

to run down onto the front, it's going to ruin that front label completely.

So I put a little on a paper towel

and just work one section at a time.

It takes a whole time to get it all off.

I think you can already see

how much better that is.

Now this is a point where you really want to stop and look at it in good

light.

Because if you just look at it's like, oh, yeah, that looks pretty good.

You want to hold it up to a light and really let light reflect off of it.

Because as you can see that there's still a good amount of residue there.

I want to get it all off.

I really don't want that stuff sitting there.

It's just going to degrade the quality of my image.

So it's really well worth your time to just slow down and make sure that it's clean.

So I repeat this process just a few times until I make sure that it's good

and clean.

I've got everything off,

ok.

So I feel pretty good about where this is sitting.

The last thing we would need to do is remove the plastic off the very top.

Then we can build our set and start working on white line, black line,