Fancy a beer?

I caught this Peroni bottle resting on a worn wooden post at the marina, the kind of accidental still life you don’t stage — you simply recognise and frame. The Pentax K-5, paired with the DA* 50-135 f/2.8, made the job effortless. That lens has a way of pulling a subject into sharp relief while letting the world behind it dissolve into painterly abstraction. Here, the background of masts, ropes, and blurred hulls becomes more a wash of colour than a setting, yet it still whispers the story of where we are.

I shot wide open, wanting the bokeh to take the harsh edges off the busy scene. The glass is tack sharp, every droplet of condensation rendered cleanly, the amber catching the soft, late-day light. Exposure was balanced to hold the bottle’s highlights without killing the gentle glow in the background — the K-5’s dynamic range making that a non-issue.

Compositionally, I went for dead-centre symmetry. A bold choice for such a bold label. The saturated red, clean typography, and the smooth cylindrical form stand in deliberate contrast to the chaotic tangle of lines behind. The result is a photograph that reads instantly: beer first, everything else second.

It’s not a commercial shot, nor is it an exercise in product glamour. It’s simply what was there — a found moment, executed with a camera-lens pairing that knows how to make a subject breathe. The beer, the sea, the fading light… all waiting for someone to take a seat and make the most of it.