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Brew Interview – 10 Questions with Ramiro Silva, Master Beertographer

October 28, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I obsess over the verbs that ride shotgun with my hobbies. Beer is especially ripe with intriguing infinitives: to open, to pour, to drink, to toast. Each one carries the weight of all the inscribed actions, all those potential manifestations of the “to do” within “to brew.”

My most recent verb obsession (surprisingly unassociated with the 2nd Amendment) is plainly: to shoot. Beertography has become my favorite sub-love within my main love, and I spend more time than I’d like to admit thinking about how to set up bottles, cans, glasses, and caps.

I always look for those masters who’ve already done, or are doing, what I hope to do. I like having a point of comparison, something I can measure my own work against to see how far I’ve come, how far I still have to go, and how I might get there.

Ramiro Silva is one of those guys. His beertography (and other boozetography) is what I aspire to one day to with my own single lens reflectivity. If you were ever looking for the “how” part of excellent beertography, check out his blog at the end of the post.

I asked him some questions (forewarning: this chat has some technical photography jargon and stuff. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments):

1. Tell us a little bit about your self, your background, and what you do for a living.

I’m a supervisor for a utility company in Seattle, WA. My background is in electronics; I’ve worked as a designer for the Boeing Co., a bench technician for the California State Lottery, and an electronic technician for the US Navy. I’m married with two kids, two dogs, and an adorable granddaughter. My interests include photography, homebrewing, and cooking, and I’m a big fan of guitars, craft beer, whiskey, and cigars. I started my photographic journey in 1978 and began enjoying beer not long after that. I feel fortunate to have watched both industries grow into what they are today.

2. Can you describe a typical beertography shoot?

By the time I get to a shooting session the concept has been developed. I’ve selected my beer and glassware, gathered my props, chosen the surface and background and have a general idea of my lighting plan. I start by setting up the scene and loosely positioning my lights. Next, I work on my composition by finding my perspective, selecting my depth of field, and tweaking the scene. Once I have my composition set, I dial in my lighting. I setup my back lights first, then my main light, and lastly my accent lights. The last thing I do is remove any unwanted reflections from the bottle/glassware. When the session is over, I kick back and enjoy a craft beer.

3. What kind of equipment do you use?

What I use for beertography is a Nikon D700 full-frame DSLR. For lenses, I typically use a Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 or a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, and occasionally extension tubes. Lighting equipment consists of Alien Bees B800 flash units, various light modifiers and reflectors. An often over looked piece of equipment is the tripod. I always shoot with one and I use aFeisol CT-3401 with a Markins ballhead.

4. You’re obviously a very talented photographer. Why take pictures of beer and other liquors?

It’s a challenge. It’s not easy making beer visually interesting; from a photographic standpoint it’s not a great subject. Great photographs typically have an interesting subject, but how do you make beer appear interesting? That’s the first challenge. Lighting is the other challenge. Great lighting is a key ingredient to great images and I approach this in a similar manner as I would portrait work. Because the subject is highly reflective the challenge is managing the reflections, eliminating those you don’t want, creating those you do, while creating interest and dimension.

5. Do you take photos of other things, too?

Of course. Over the years I’ve focused on different types of photography; portrait, landscape, wildlife, concert, sports. I enjoy them all, but not nearly as much as beer/liquor photography. I think it’s because I feel more at home in a studio environment where I have time to develop the concept, tweak the scene, and control the lighting. Plus, finding a subject is easier for me…they’re waiting at the bottle shop.

6. What do you think the most important aspects of good beertography are?

For me, it’s subject, composition, lighting. If these aspects are strong you will have a compelling image no matter what genre of photography you’re shooting.

The subject should be interesting and clearly defined, and the viewer should know exactly what to look at. Try to separate your subject from the background by blurring it or by making it brighter than the background.

Use basic compositional techniques. “Rule of thirds” places your subject off center and tends to makes your image more interesting. “Fill the Frame” by getting closer or zooming in. It draws your attention to the subject. Change your “Perspective”, move your camera left, right, up, or down and try to present a view not typically seen. “Simplify the scene” by removing distracting elements from the foreground or background.

Light is the most important – and often overlooked aspect – of photography (in my opinion). I break down light to three components; quality, color, and direction. “Quality” refers to soft or hard light. Hard light produces crisp shadows while soft light produces soft shadows. “Color” can be warm, neutral or cold. You can use this creatively to produce a mood. “Direction” refers to where the light is coming from; front, back, or side. Direction is used to define shapes, create shadows, and reveal textures. There isn’t a “correct” setting when it comes to lighting. You make choices to achieve the look you want.

7. If you had to pass along one piece of advice to the rookies out there, what would it be?

Keep grinding, there is a lot to learn. For me, great photography boils down to three things; interesting subject, strong composition, and great lighting. Focus your efforts there and your images will improve. Know this: you won’t master photography by reading a book or taking a class. It’s a lifelong journey of learning…enjoy the ride.

8. Are there any beers you really want to take pictures of, or do you just work with what you have available?

I work with what I can find at my local bottle shops. Knowing that great beertography needs an interesting subject, I select beers based on bottle shape, label design, beer color, or whatever I’m in the mood to drink. Once I select a beer I work on developing a concept. There have been times when the concept comes first then I hunt down the beer to compliment that.

9. Have you done any work directly for companies (or breweries) or is this just a hobby for you?

It’s just a hobby at this time. Breweries often compliment me on my work and if they want to work on a project together I would be thrilled. That goes for you beer bloggers and journalists as well!

10. Is there anything you’d like to tell the people of the craft beer world?

If you haven’t tried beertography give it a shot, pun intended. You never know what’s going to light your fire.

Follow me on my journey with your favorite social app:

Google+: https://plus.google.com/104263271542304648793/posts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/silvatone
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/96437087@N04/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/silvatone
Tumblr: http://themashpit.tumblr.com/

Visit my blog for beertography tips and behind-the-scenes look at my shooting sessions.

http://themashpit.blogspot.com/

How to take Beertographs

September 25, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

As a willing thrall of the blog-lords, I often stretch myself beyond my default medium of words. A blog offers a unique chance to flex groups of creative deltoids that traditional print media might not; as a blog author you get to write, photograph, video, and record your content with only yourself to answer to in terms of artistic design. The blog as a platform not only accepts the idea of multimedia, but actually encourages it.

I have included at least one photograph with every blog post I’ve written since mid-2010. The ancient adage of a photo being worth a thousand words still rings clear and crisp across the valleys of the internet, but they serve as an additional anchor to a post, a visual representation of your words that engage another of your reader’s senses.

I’ve always considered writing an auditory art: even though you have to read the words with your eyes, you’re sounding them aloud in your head, and, in a unnatural twist over the bar at the top of a mental pole-vault, listening to them to fully process their meaning. It’s weird to think about, but gives a nice tidy explanation as to why photos and other graphics are such an important companion to a wall of text.

And of course, this is a beer blog (mostly) and so I include pictures of beer/beer-paraphernalia. But they aren’t just pictures, they are meticulously plotted, planned, and purposed shots, John Kleinchester’s shutter babies, or more simply, just “beertographs.”

You could just whip out your Nikon Coolpix or your iPhone 5 and snap a blurry, poorly lit shot of whatever is about to go down your gullet, but to capture an image that really invokes the spirit of the beer, a flash and echo of the brewmasters art, you really need to commit the time and energy to setting up the shot.

Note: This is not a purist photography tutorial, and I won’t be getting too in-depth about white balancing, F-stops, or aperture. If you want to see how real photographers (not just guys like me armed with too much time and a DSLR) take photos of beer, check out this amazing post from Silvatone about his award winning shot for the Anchor Brewing Fourth of July Beertography contest.

How to take Beertographs

Things you’ll need:

-Beer (can or bottle, it matters little)
-A glass (usually representative of the style of beer you’re working with, but it can be anything that fits a theme)
-A bottle opener (to open the beer, otherwise it’s going to be hard to take pictures of it)
-A camera (more on this below)
-Assorted props (to accentuate the amber glow in the glass)

1. Gather your equipment

I shoot with a Canon DSLR. Originally, I used a standard EOS Rebel XS, but recently inherited an EOS Rebel Ti2, which has become my primary camera. For different applications I shoot with four lenses: the stock 18-55mm, a mid-range 28-70mm, a zoom 55-250mm, and a mega-zoom 70-300mm. Each has its place depending on the shot, and I’ll often change lenses in the middle of a shoot, just to see what effects I can achieve from different standing distances, zoom-lengths, and positions.

That’s an auto-flash puffer on my main camera for indoor nighttime shots, FYI.

I know what you’re thinking. DSLRs are expensive, the lenses even more so. I have good news: you don’t need a DSLR to take great beertographs. You standard point-and-click camera or even your smartphone can take excellent shots, you just need patience and practice as to best set up the bottle and glass. Good photography, at its heart, is not about how expensive or fancy the camera, but about how well the photographer can see. You are basically just capturing a single moment from your field of vision, so if it looks good to you, and you can steal that moment from the gods of light and time, it will probably make a good photograph.

I prefer a DSLR because of its specific purpose. I like the heft of it in my hand, the feeling of the lens wheel under my fingers. Conversely, my phone is the same device I tweet and play Punch Quest on, and somehow, probably unfairly, I don’t respect it as a serious camera. I’m not trying to discourage those iPhonographers and Androtographers out there, as I’ve seen the quality that can come from phones, it’s just not for me.

Ultimately, when you’re out there, trying to get a shot, the best camera is the one you have with you when you need it. Shoot with what you’ve got.

2. Wander around looking at stuff

Because I shoot mostly outdoors, with “naturally found” locations, this is my single favorite aspect of beetography. The time I get to wander around my yard, my neighbor’s yard, their neighbor’s yard, sometimes all the way to the train tracks at the end of my street with a camera slung over my shoulder and a beer bottle in my pocket. I look at everything and anything, take in the light and how it’s sprawls lazily across the road and grass, checking out the hues of the trees and the flowers and the rainbow of paint colors that splatter my spectrum as cars and houses and trashcans.

You want to look for interesting angles and textures, especially for whatever platform the beer will be on (wood, stone, grass?), and on whatever will be in the background. Find patterns and natural lines that are just flat out nice to look at. Pay attention to how the light is cutting through the trees, and how shadows are forming based on the angle of the sun.

During this time you want to think about the style and name of the beer: if it’s a hoppy IPA, maybe you want an abundance of green in the picture to represent the hops? If the label is bright red, do you want to put it in a relatively bland and brown setting to make the vibrancy really pop? If it’s named “Swing”, maybe incorporate your neighbor’s porch swing somehow?

This is the time to get creative. Really play with the name and style and colors of the label. Try positioning the bottle and glass – unopened and unfilled – in several different places to see how they look well before you take any pictures. If you’re like me, you’ll have to actively fight the urge to drink the beer. A good picture will make the beer taste even better.

3. Take some test shots

Assume you only have one can or bottle of the beer you’re trying to shoot, even if there are 5 more snuggled in a 6-pack back home. Don’t go in for the kill with a quickly thrown shutter until you’re sure about the positioning and light. Patience is key here, and a joy of digital is immediate feedback without the worry of wasting film. Short of running out of daylight, you’ve got plenty of chances to capture that perfect exposure, so take your time, play around with getting a perfect balance of foreground focus and background bokeh.

To achieve this much coveted effect, you have to adjust your depth of field either manually on the camera, with the assistance of a lens, or by manually positioning the beer and glass in such a way that one will naturally blur if you focus on the closer of the pair. The result looks something like this:

Bokeh is the blurring of a background to create a focal point in the foreground. It's pretty much the best thing ever.

Bokeh is the intentional blurring of a background to create a focal point in the foreground. It’s pretty much the best thing ever. Glass and metal glare is pretty much the worst thing ever.

4. Pour the beer and start clicking

It’s time to pour the beer. The reason for all the prep work is tied directly to the frothing fuzz of the head, which acts like a little timer, constantly counting down from the second you pour until it completely dissipates. To truly capture the essence of the beer, you’ll need to get your shot in that very brief window of “perfectly settled head” that last only a few minutes on some beers.

When in doubt, take more pictures than you think you need. A tiny difference in focus (with auto-focus on or off) may make or break the quality of an image. Take a bunch to make sure you captured that perfect one. You can delete the rest if you’re not happy.

Here’s another from the same shoot as the Avery IPA (above) that didn’t turn out as well because the auto-focus shifted on me at the last second:

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.” -Khalil Gibran

5. Review, post-process, tweet to @beertography

The display screen should give you a good enough idea of how the shot turned out, but you can’t really trust the colors or the focus until you’ve uploaded it to the computer.

I try to choose the best one or two from the say, 20, I took, then throw those into Photoshop to correct any minor white balance or brightness issues that I didn’t manage to do with the camera. I use the Vibrance, Shadows and Highlights, and Color Balance options (under Image>Adjustments) to make sure the colors are as true to life as possible. I very rarely do any actual touch up unless there is a glaringly obvious thumbprint on the glass (always wash your glassware pre-beetography session!) or a big old cat hair ruining the shot.

And when you’re proud of your work, ready to show the world, send it out to John @beertography. He’s kind of a big deal when it comes to pictures of beer.

Death of a Man, Birth of a Star

August 19, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

My father died around 3:00 on August 12, 2013. He was 61 years old. He lived more in those six decades than most men could in twelve. If life is measured by brightness and intensity – with weak men an ember smoldering on a stick of incense and great men a blaze feeding on a forest – my father was a supernova.

As his light faded, liver and kidneys unable to hold the battlements against the three year siege from Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia, he saw things. Things that some may attribute to heightened brain activity near death, or hallucinations caused by elevated ammonia levels, or delusion caused by prolonged time in the ICU. Things that others may attribute to gods, or the God, or that shining pre-glimpse of the afterlife pointing the way to the next world.

Some of what he saw scared him. Monsters snarling over his head. Some of what he saw angered him. A mocking, morphing clock. Some of what he saw comforted him. His whole family standing next to him, holding his hands.

But the last thing he saw, that he pointed to with bright eyes, his brown shifting from my blue to the empty space behind me in the sterile sadness of the ICU, is what will twinkle in my memory forever.

He saw stars. Galaxies. A whole universe inside of a tiny room.

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. As we reassured him that he could rest and his pain was over, there came a moment where he ceased to be my father, and became only the body my father had inhabited. The energy of his body will return to the Earth, continuing the cycle of growth and decay, forever part of the beauty that blooms and incredulity of the natural world. But if energy cannot be destroyed, where did his mind go? Where is that brilliant soul so full of passion and compassion that was so much more than the sum of his skin and hair and organs?

My wife and I have discussed the “spark” – the flash in the eyes of someone alive and proud and rhapsodic – and what happens to that energy when it “leaves” a dying body. I’m sure that Heaven or Nirvana or perhaps even Valhalla are popular destinations for the purest of spirits, but I’ve never been the religious type. My love of science and tangible empiricism are directly inherited from my father.

Carl Sagan is often quoted for his nod to the idea of cosmic cohesion: “We are made of star stuff.” He meant that our basic elements – the hydrogen and oxygen and carbon – are the same as those found in the sprawling void. But I take it to mean that we’re all connected to each other in ways we might not understand, that our energies echo on in explicit physical ways, imbued in the things we touch and love, on paths that aren’t necessarily visible or measurable by what we currently know but exist in our reality all the same.

The same day he passed, and all that energy dissipated into unknown space, a new shining spot of light appeared in a previously dark area of space. Just north of the constellation Delphinus, just west of the star Altair, a nova burst into life, flaring with such intensity that it can be seen with the naked eye if you look to the northeast on a clear night.

I’d like to think that his energy was the final push this little binary system needed to blast its light across the limitless distance down into our eyes, into our minds.

I’d like to think he’s forever there, winking and smiling, part of a massive power that while impossibly distant, is right there for me to look at every night.

I’d like to think that the best people go on to be more, their energy taken in death, to be reused in birth.

(A full article about the nova can be found here)

RA 20 h 23′ 31″, Dec. +20 deg. 46

How to read 1000 pages in two days

July 2, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Having trouble finding time in your busy schedule to read all of those awesome books on your “awesome books to read” list?

Follow my simple guide, and you’ll be plowing through Fifty Shades of Grey and the Twilight Saga is record time!

How to read 1000 pages in two days:

Things you’ll need:
-A book (or books)
-Working eyeballs
-Light
-Beer (anything cold)

Step 1: Have a massive, sudden storm demolish the power grid/infrastructure near your home

Something like this should do:

Tis’ but a scratch.

Step 2: Read, because you have nothing else to do

It is best to distract yourself from the heat and lack of any creature comforts by reading something riveting that takes place somewhere cold. I chose A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin. The Frostfangs and The Wall didn’t sound so bad when I was roasting myself in our void of AC.

Step 3: Continue to read until you fall asleep

While you’re digging through drawers looking for your LED book light in the waning daylight, find some way to keep your beer cold. I recommend stealing some ice from your neighbors, filling a martini shaker, and shoving your beer in there as a make shift wine-bucket.

Good luck to everyone in the DC Metro Area still without power. May your batteries never die and your candles burn long.

Land Rovers make good pole support, apparently.