The more time I spend doing photography the more ideas stack up on the ‘to do’ list; the journal every artist has (or should have) of their ideas, inspirations, thoughts, and musings. My journals are tremendously valuable to me, if any were misplaced I would be terrified that I would forget an idea. I’ve started to type out these musings and plans, so they can be backed up, and prevent possible losses in the future.
As the lists grow I try to continually work on as many of the projects as possible, translating my visions into real images. This shot, has been on the list for over a year now. It grew conceptually as I played around with a very primitive setup in a living room, exploring lighting a reflective object with supplemental lighting. It finally grew into one week where I did three nights of shooting and tweaking. After a total of four separate shoots on the idea I finally got what I needed.
Many of the ideas in my books are dependent on gear, weather, seasons and athletes. However others like this stay in the journal for a while because shots with this kind of technical nature are hard to execute.

Beer is always difficult to shoot, timing, pouring, lighting, surroundings, are all little technical aspects that need to be controlled, and used effectively. When all the technical parts come together the concept comes to life and makes an impression on an otherwise lifeless object. This shot was made much more difficult with the smoke in the background; Rickard’s Red is actually quite dark, when trying to light the beer with bright smoke it brought up many other unexpected obstacles.

After all the nitty gritties i’m very happy with the image, the only reason i’m not thirsty right now; I just finished drinking a beer cause it already made me thirsty editing it earlier.
Enjoy