I was honoured by having an opportunity to take photos of excellent wines from the local vineyard Quinta dos Capinhas.

The first challenge was to squeeze my studio into space that got available. One needs lots of space; to be able to place all the lights in the right place - a few centimetres here or there sometimes makes all the difference between a beautiful light gradient on a bottle and ugly black-and-white stripes.

Another challenge I created for myself was going up and down through the house three times (that is nine floors together!), looking for a spray to help me create the “fresh out of the fridge” look of the white wine. It was in a box where I looked at the beginning… I just overlooked it in a gloomy light.

A couple more lessons learnt. Next time:

• Choose bottles that are as symmetrical as possible. They are handmade, not completely precise!

• Make sure that the labels are clean and straight.

• Same with the top labels - as straight as possible. It is possible to fix it in Photoshop, but it requires additional time.

• Mirrors don’t work well in front of the bottle if the light is on the side. A torch is better, but it gives more blue light which then again needs to be corrected in Photoshop. It may sometimes work better to simply paint the right colour in Photoshop where needed.