Tag: Cocktails

Cocktails with Don Draper, Dinner and Drinks at Oakland’s New Mid-Century Modern, Bardo Lounge and Supper Club

If, like me, you are a fan of all things mid-century modern, then you won’t want to miss Oakland’s newest Lakeshore addition, Bardo Lounge and Supper Club. Like a vintage trip with Don Draper back in time, you’ll enjoy all the little touches that make for a perfect night out for some excellent cocktails along with lounge or supper service to go with them.

With Bardo, owners Seth and Jenni Bregman have transformed the former Michel Bistro space on Lakeshore into a sort of museum of great taste and design from our favorite wayback era — with some seriously good tunes spinning all night long.

Along with the lush 60s feel, Bardo serves up swingin’ cocktails with lounge service downstairs (no reservations required) and supper service upstairs (reservations required). The downstairs lounge features a lounge and bar where you can order “lounge fare” and some of the items off of the larger tasting menu from supper service upstairs.

Last night Mrs. TH and I tried the lounge service at the bar. In terms of the booze, I opted for the “Walk in the Orchard” cocktail, a well balanced craft cocktail with High West Double Rye, Cynar 70, Apple Cider, Fresh Lime Juice, White Pepper Thyme Maple and Angostura Bitters. Mrs. TH chose the equally delicious “Pilot Maxine,” Blackberry-Washed Gordon’s Gin, Top Hat East India Tonic, Fresh Lime Juice and Fee Brother’s Rhubarb Bitters.

From the menu I’d highlight the devilishly delicious deviled duck eggs, the super rich foie gras cacio e pepe pasta, and most definitely the broccolini casserole — the toasted shallot and almonds on top of the casserole were just perfect. That casserole would win any neighborhood bake off hands down.

Bardo’s Lounge is open from 5pm to Late Wednesday-Sunday and supper is served upstairs 5:30-10pm Thursday-Saturday and 5:30-9:30pm on Sunday. I’d recommend getting there as early as you can for lounge service. We had no problem getting a spot at the bar at 5:30pm last night, but it filled up quickly with a line as it got later. Bonus tip, go catch an epic sunset, with your old school film camera of course, for an early winter sunset over Lake Merritt and just walk on over for dinner afterwards.

More photos here.

3343 Lakeshore Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610

Bardo’s upstairs supper service

Walk in the Orchard: fall aromas and flavors in a glass. High West Double Rye, Cynar 70, Apple Cider, Fresh Lime Juice, White Pepper Thyme Maple, Angostura Bitters

Pilot Maxine: refreshing and light with berry notes. Blackberry-Washed Gordon’s Gin, Top Hat East India Tonic, Fresh Lime Juice, Fee Brother’s Rhubarb Bitters

Deviled Duck Eggs: Spiced red wine jus, scallions, duck skins

Kanapachi tartare: persimmon, Calabrian pepper, brussel sprouts, charred vegetable broth, yam chips

Foie gras cacio e pepe, beemster, duck jerky

Broccolini Casserole: Brown mustard, gruyere, almond, shallot

14 oz Dry Aged Prime New York: Bone-in, grilled and loaded baked potato, greens, B1 Sauce

Ice Cream Sandwich: Banana semifreddo, double chocolate cookie.

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

December 3, 2018
Photo Shoot Ride-along – Photographing Cocktails

In this article you are going to join me on a real client photo shoot photographing cocktails and learn how we created the final images. You can see a previous ride-along doing head shots on a white background here.

Client brief

The client is a 1960′s Tiki themed cocktail bar in downtown San Diego. They just revamped their cocktail menu and needed photos for advertising, marketing, social media, and PR.

Setting up

The bar is to the left of some foldable colored glass windows. I decided to open these windows to let in some natural light to the bar top. I didn’t get a photo with the windows open as I was in a rush, but here is the bar setup:

With these windows open there was nice soft, indirect lighting. I decided quickly that I wanted to use the back of the bar as the background.

Selecting the aperture

I grabbed a glass with pineapple leaf garnishes for a quick test. I set my camera on the bar, selected aperture priority, set the glass in front of it, shot at f/20, and got this:

Meh. After seeing this I decided I didn’t want to see all the details in the background because it was competing with the glass. I dialled the aperture to f/3.5 and took another test shot:

Much better. The glass was being lit from the natural light coming through the windows to the right of the glass. The problem was that the back bar was too dark.

If I overexposed to get the background brighter then the glass would have been overblown. The solution? Use a strobe to light the background.

Lighting the background

Now that I had the cocktail the way I wanted it, I needed to throw some light on that background. I recomposed the photo and got this:

I grabbed an Alien Bee 800 strobe and popped on a 40 degree grid to keep the light beam tight. I didn’t want the light to spread over the whole area, just the back bar. I placed the light on the far left side of the bar and popped the flash. Note: I didn’t end up using that umbrella.

You can see the back bar was now lit up.

Much better! It wasn’t quite there yet, but we were getting closer.

The light from the strobe wasn’t evenly spread across the background. See the hot spot of highlights on the top left side in the photo above? That needed to go.

I angled the strobe so the light would cast across the background instead of just the left side. I grabbed another garnish glass and took a test shot:

Much better. Now I had the background the way I wanted it. From there it was simply a matter of composition.

Composition

I had been planning on filling the frame with each cocktail vertically until the client mentioned they wanted space to the side of each photo to write editorial content.

Instead of shooting with my 100mm f/2.8 macro lens I shot this all on a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens.

How cool is that garnish? A dolphin playing with a ball in its mouth – awesome. This left some room off to the right for editorial content.

I decided to switch this up and leave some space on the other side. This is helpful for magazines that alternate left and right pages.

Sometimes breaking the rules is fun. Shooting this cocktail straight down the middle clearly makes it the focus but still leaves room off to the sides for editorial.

The “hero” shot

Sometimes shooting from a low angle and slightly angling the camera upward can give a cocktail a ‘big’ appearance.

Wrapping up

All in all it was a pretty straight forward shoot. I had to do a little problem solving with balancing natural light and artificial light, as well as how to best compose the cocktails.

The client is happy with the images and so am I.

Did you find this helpful?

If so, let me know in the comments. I would love to take you on more client photo shoots with me and show you how they come together. Now I’m off to enjoy a nice Tiki cocktail!

The post Photo Shoot Ride-along – Photographing Cocktails by Mike Newton appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

July 5, 2014