Jelly shots for the New Year

WHAT

A shot of the inside of my fridge which, at the moment, is home to dozens of vodka jelly shots in preparation for my New Year's Eve party.

The green ones are lime, the blue are 'berry blue' flavour (they taste a bit like 'Demazin' cold medicine) and the red ones are raspberry flavour. I also have another tray of 'creaming soda' flavoured shots on another shelf.

The recipe for making these shots is at the bottom of this post

WHY

I took this photo mainly to document the jelly shots as part of my NYE party. I've never made jelly shots before and was quite pleased with the results - let's hope the party guests like them too!

I also liked how the light from inside the fridge lit the shots and made some of them appear to glow. Plus, it's not everyday that the inside of the fridge becomes a worthy photographic subject :)

HOW

I hand-held my camera as close to the tray of jelly shots as I could (but still allowing proper focus to be made) so as to avoid other fridge items creeping into the scene as much as possible.

Because it was relatively dark in the fridge and I wanted a fairly shallow depth of field, I opened up the aperture to f/4. This wider aperture allowed more light in to the camera's sensor which meant I could increase the shutter speed (1/13s) to get the hand-held shot without the need for a tripod.

I focused on the centre row of jelly shots (third row from the front).

POST-PRODUCTION

In photoshop, I increased the clarity, black point and vibrance to really make the jelly colours stand out. These alterations also made the rim of the plastic shot glasses brighter and highlighted the white 'reflection' on the tops of the four blue shots at the front.

I also cropped the shot to remove the milk bottle and other assorted fridge items that had snuck in at the sides.

Recipe:

I used 'Aeoroplane' jelly crystals

Place jelly crystals in a bowl.

Pour 1 cup of boiling water over crystals and stir very well to dissolve.

Add 150ml vodka

Add 50ml cold water

Stir again

Pour mixture into shot glasses

Refrigerate for approximately 4 hours.

NB. If you add too much vodka, the shots will not set properly. Also, to remove the shot from the glass, you may need to run a cake tester or teaspoon around the sides of the glass. Alternatively, you can place a small amount of oil inside the shot glass before making the jelly - I haven't tried this but I've read about other people who did this. I didn't know if the oil would affect the taste or not.