Five Hours

After witnessing the widespread use of Five Hour Energies in the debate community (myself included, but only one a day at tournaments) to make it through long days, late nights at camp, and tournaments in general, I had the idea of making a "Five Hour Energy Syringe." I'm sure you've heard plenty about the wide variety of energy drinks on the market and their potential for abuse and bad side effects, so I though it'd be a clever way to mock their use. It did require me to order a syringe from Amazon (the parents loved that...) but I've always thought that I lacked creativity when it comes to thinking up studio type shots, so I ran with the idea.

Here's a really poor shot of the setup in my room (click for larger).

Strobist: Sunpak 333 @ full power with white shoot through umbrella to upper left pointed down, Sunpak 333 @ 1/2 power with an index card for a bouncer to the right and angled down. 1/160, f/11, 200 ISO, focal length varied. The cameras was on a tripod with my 18-200mm slightly to the right of the center of the board. And of course, I used a piece of black foam board and red art paper propped up by white foam board for an oh so professional background.

I poked a hole into the cap of the Five Hour Energy bottle for the first shot: drawing up a dose.

Next, I drilled out the bottom of the bottle (messed up the first time, luckily I had bought two bottles). To make the syringe fit inside the bottle, I took a pair of pliers and cut down the plastic from the end of the syringe until it fit fairly level with the back. I dumped in a bunch of hot glue to get it to stick. The whole I drilled out was much larger than needed (I'm bad with these kinds of measurements, although this let me pour in lots of glue) so I cut a "O" shaped piece of index card to glue over it.

Something about putting Five Hour Energy in a shot glass seemed appropriate.

The best part? It works! Just kidding...