Lighting Try_Advice_Help_Critique_Please

[cargo]

Hi all clever lighting people. I posted this here as for one it's the lighting section and two you guys and gals love to work out how things are lite. I often can't work it out. Anyways I came accross this photo last week. Which for some reason caught my attention and made me want to try and create something similiar. Starting with the light really, as Morrisons only had a small selection of sweets and none with good and differing textures. So wanting to take photos I went ahead with what they had. Thinking I could work on subject matter at another time as it is only for fun and I just wanted to take photos.
I have posted the original image I saw along with the authors name. I am not sure this is legal so please remove or I will if requested too in the thread. Apparently this was for Vogue I cant find out what the piece was about that this image belongs too, so I have no idea what the liquid is. Again I just mooched around the kitchen and found some jam which did contain seeds so I pushed it through a sieve to remove them.
I took number one image on Saturday and had another stab on Sunday changing lighting some what.
The images have just been through Canon Dpp. So only been cropped sharpened a touch and a very minor S curve.

It would be good to know if I have gone about this the right way. I have not said how I lite these as I am sure you people will be able to tell me and hopefully help me learn how I could get it more like the start image.

Only thing I will say is I only use speedlights.

Hope I have not bored the pants of you all !

Gaz

Inspiration Photo

1

2

3

 

[Scooter]

Hi Gary - I like yours better - especially number 1. 2 and 3 look like more diffused light which has taken the shine off the red gloop. I think you need the shine. The only other thing I can suggest is maybe adding some fill ligh (big source more or less from camera, on a lower setting than the key) and maybe lighting the background - white or a another strong colour using a gel on the light.

Nice job

 

[rjbell]

A tweak of levels maybe?

 

[MidnightUK]

I like yours better

What Scooter said. I like 1 and 2 best. The trails on 3 look a tad too neat and even to me.
Nice job, well done.

 

[cargo]

I like yours better

Hi Owen. I didn't expect that comment at all ! Great to hear though as it means I may have learn't some of this stuff. Yes you are correct in number 1. I had my softbox straight above which was giving me that shine. Although I did like that I thought the original was missing the glare/shine so assumed it must have been lite with a much larger source.
Unfortunately that didn't dawn on me until the next day, so I had another bash, when I had worked out a way of positioning a shower curtain above the subject and below the softbox.
So image 2 as the shower curtain in place thus removing the shine so to speak. I also had a speedlight to the side to bring out the texture/form with a homemade grid attached. This brought the texture out well enough but did leave little highlights behind. So in image 3 I placed a diffuser in front of it which did spread the highlight out a bit. I suppose on the downside to that was it also softened the texture out a touch too !
I hope that makes sense if you read it back.
Thanks for the detailed feedback.

A tweak of levels maybe?

Thanks Rob.Yes I decided not to do any retouching as I thought it would not have been a true representation of what I took for the critique here.

What Scooter said. I like 1 and 2 best. The trails on 3 look a tad too neat and even to me.
Nice job, well done.

Thanks Jay. Yes I see what you mean. I think I chose these three as they sort of showed how I had tried to light them and rectify things as I went along. I get lost on the way at times !

Gaz