Wanting to try the bokeh effect with still life I hung the lights from a boom and tried to get as much distance from them to increase blurring of a shallow depth of field while still trying to have them fill the frame.
I placed my to fill my frame and pre-set my focus.
Opting for a single light setup I pointed a snoot so the beam of light would stream across the subject and not spill onto the background.
I metered for the fairy lights using my cameras built-in meter. Typically with still life you can slow your shutter speed down, which would have been perfect however due to the fairy lights being fairly flimsy and needing adjusting a lot they were swinging and took a very long time to become still. I needed a faster shutter speed of 1/80 to reduce motion blur, which resulted in needing an ISO of 800 and the lens' widest aperture of f/2.8.
I took several test shots to arrange composition and once satisfied I metered the flash lighting with a light meter making sure the light meter was reading at ISO 800, readjusting the light until f/2.8 was the correct exposure.
I metered from the Jack Daniels bottle as it was the brightest label. The result however, due the angle of the bottles and light is that the Jack Daniels and Martini bottles are well exposed however the Haig club bottle isn't due to the bottles face not being in the light.
I moved the haig bottle so although the light isn't hitting the bottles face, the light will pass into the bottle through the side illuminating it from within as the light refracts inside.
My biggest problem with the image is the fairy lights don't quite fill the frame edge to edge.
However I was very happy with the results from concept to output as little experimentation was needed due to my understanding and planning.