Hops and Malt

If this looks a lot like yesterday's Bourbon Barrel image, that's because it's supposed to it. Originally, the Bourbon Barrel piece was just a work in itself. However, I decided that it needed a companion piece, something complimentary, and I couldn't think of anything better than beer.

The Bourbon piece was easy. I had that image lying around on my disk for a few months now. It just took a flash of inspiration, and I created the layout in just a few minutes. The beer piece was indescribably harder.

When I think about my photography, two things I think about quite a bit are vision and voice. I hope that everything I do is the work of some vision, and I hope that I'm developing some sort of consistent voice.

The Hops and Malts image was the end of a strange process. I'd constructed a great image in my head of a beer montage. I wanted it to center on Kentucky Ale, a great local product. I ended up with this:

That's not a terrible frame. Sure, the hops and malts are outside of the DOF. The wheat is much too light and distracts attention away from the beer. But I did some things well. Getting the light bottle to have distinct edges on a dark background was tough. It required a consultation with Light: Science and Magic, and some well placed Gaffer's tape, but I made it work, and it was rewarding to see a disappearing bottle transform. It was equally enjoyable to snoot one of my strobes to make sure I had enough light on the label to give it the detail the shot needed.

However, what's clear is that this shot lacks voice and vision. It may be on its way to being technically sufficient, but it's lacking the voice that the barrel shot has. What I had imagined turned out to be the furthest thing from what I needed.

So, frustrated, tired, and hungry, I re-imagined the shot. I decided to strip down all of the nonsense and complication and give a voice to my subject—beer.

So I switched to a macro lens and took lots of shots of hops and malts. I got in close to what beer fundamentally is, and I found the voice that the project needed.

It's a thrill, working out the creative process like this. It's frustrating to see our expectations and best laid plans fall flat on their faces (even though it may be through not fault of our own) and exhilarating to break through the things that may be keeping us from finding our voice.