garnet

Good day spent drinking tea and practicing taking photos of said tea.

This image is my goal.
The color rendition, lighting, focus, everything is so perfect. I wonder if this was a one or two people job, I suppose it could be done by one person with a tripod and remote shutter.

Now I'm a little embarrassed to post my own photos haha.
Regardless, today's drink is Joseph Wesley's Keemun Congfu. I was a little confused since the tea is from FuJian whereas Keemun referes to QiMen in AnHui according to wiki. The tea didn't make much of an impression, aside from it's longevity. I got 12+ brews from around 5g in my yixing (~100ml?). The first two brews had a distinct sour and...iuno leathery (but not the smell) taste.

Manual focus practice, would be nice if my camera had focus peaking since it's difficult to tell on the back screen whether something is actually sharp. This was shot in raw to pull out details out of the shadows since it was a pain to expose properly with the dark leaves and bright aluminum.

My poor attempt at a pouring shot, one decent image out of 5 out of focus ones. Again manual focus first and then trying my best to hold the camera steady with one hand while pouring with the other hand. Wishing for a tripod...
Did some extra post-processing on the area of the lid where water is splashed on to increase the contrast. My trick is to set a b/w gradient map on hard light.

I recently switched my film emulation to velvia and am really liking it's color rendition. Works especially well for the tea liquor. Also started to use curves when editing from jpegs to help tone down the over and under exposed areas.

PS. teachat is dangerous for the wallet, ended up buying a teacup. It is gorgeous *u*