Beertography!

Here is a quick list of my oddest behaviors that have all been validated and encouraged by the internet:

Making way too many Lord of the Rings related puns and inappropriate references
Talking about beer and beer science and beer culture and beer goblins
Writing short stories that use (and overuse) nested adjectival clauses, resumptive modifiers, and chain-appositives

And most recently:

Unabashedly crawling across/through neighborhood yards/porches/decks to take photographs of beer

John Kleinchester over at Beertography.com (beer + photography = beertography) did me the honor of making me the official beertographer of the week, starting today. I want to not only thank him for highlighting my work, but for making me feel a lot less insane about filling my SDHC card with nothing but images of amber fluids and fancy glassware.

I take photos because I enjoy looking at things. Sounds simple, but it’s true. I relish the chance to watch a sun sink, purple and orange, into Chincoteague Bay. Or to see the bubbles scamper upwards out of a glass, tearing through the golden prison on a pilser. I love perspective and angles and light and shadow. And really, all writers should all at least appreciate photography, because one click and shutter flutter is equal to 1000 words of 12 point Times New Roman. That’s proven fact.

All eccentricity and absurdity aside, I’d also like to thank all my readers for giving me the energy and motivation to keep writing and crawling through the verge with camera in hand. You guys are the best.

Here’s a smattering of some of my favorite beertographs (captured over the years). Enjoy!

The first paragraph of this story was part of my homework assignment for my grammar class. I had to mimic Steinbeck. It hurt my brain.

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” ― Cormac McCarthy

“Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous.” -Barbara Ehrenreich

A shoal is a somewhat linear landform extending into a body of water, typically composed of sand, silt or small pebbles. This is a somewhat delicious beer extending into my stomach, composed of water, hops, and alcohol.

A great beer at the end of the day if your dogs are barking.

Arr, here be good beers.

This story brought to you buy DuClaw’s brewing, Ed Pearlman’s teaching, and Anthony Hecht’s writing.

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the beer whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er, She shall drink, ah, nevermore!