There is a wonderful authentic medieval castle located in the outskirts of
Calistoga. Dario Sattui's Castello de Amoroso, the Napa Wine Castle. One of the
jobs of a photographer is problem solving. The wine barrel room was one of
these challenges.
It may well be one of the most impressive barrel rooms in the United States. It is 12,000 square feet, 14-foot high ceilings and 40 crossed vaulted bays with ribbing constructed of ancient Roman handmade bricks.
Needless to say, the barrel room is something that each visitor wants to see, so it's always crowded. I knew I wanted to show the room with a wine glass in the foreground. It was all I could do to get the room itself photographed without people. I waited until closing time and shot the empty room. The second challenge was to photograph the wine glass setup without being in the way.
The solution was to do the wine glass setup in my studio and strip it into the barrel room photo. The thing is, I wanted the beautiful chandelier lights and the brick archways from the barrel room reflected in the wine. As a side note, I choose a wine glass that repeated the curved brick arches in the stem.
So, the solution was to have a large 16" x 20" transparency made of the barrel room photo. I put the transparency behind the wine glass in my studio and illuminated it from behind with a strobe and soft-box. I now had the wine glass looking like it was photographed in the barrel room itself.