Alex the Photo Blog

I’m a good bit behind on this one, but it’s what always seems to happen to my personal photos.  Back in October, my good friend Curt Mayer and I took a day off of work to travel to northwest Georgia and south Tennessee to photograph a couple of the best state parks around.  Though the weather was a rough (snow/rain all day), we were able to crank the heater high enough and take the top down on the convertible we stole borrowed.   Cloudland canyon has numerous waterfalls and streams in addition to good foliage views- definitely a place I plan to visit again!

This is a continuation of the Venice, Italy post I did on Monday.  Italy has a ridiculous amount of picturesque scenes.  Any idiot could have gotten these shots.    And as always, click on the pix for bigger versions!

I can’t claim this one.  This is the one where Keri snatched the camera from me (she really never does this) and said, “no, shoot from behind the railing, don’t shoot over it!”   I gotta say, she’s got an eye when she’s not afraid to use it. 

As I have alluded to in the past, it always takes me a while to edit my personal photos.  When I go on vacation and take pictures, it always seems that when I get back, paid gigs seem to come my way and take precedent to whatever personal work I want to take care of.  As far as mine and Keri’s Italy trip goes, I had weddings, portrait sessions, and the fact that I took 2,600 photos working against me.

I’m trying to chip away at it city by city from the trip.  You can see Day 1 in Suttgart, Germany here.  I’ve finally gotten through days 2 & 3 in Venice and soon to come will be days 4 & 5 in Cinque Terre.  Feel free to give me honest feedback as I’m normally more of a portrait photographer than I am of landscapes.  If you have an interest in any prints in particular, email me!

The Rialto Bridge

We went to the island of Murano and watched this guy turn the glowing blob of glass below…

…to this in about 5 minutes.

I hope everyone had as great a Christmas as I did.  I was able to see my family, Keri’s family, and a bunch of my close high school friends.  Even though I still live near my hometown, it’s still tough to find the time to get together with everyone.  One of my best friends was even able to make it home all the way from grad school in London.  You can always tell a good friend when not only do they find time for you when home on vacation, but when a phone call goes like this:

Trevor:  “Hey- can I come stay with you for a couple of days?”
Me:  “Sure, but I have to chop wood”
Trevor:  “Chop wood?  Seriously?  Sure.”

From Keri and I…

…and my family that was in town (sorry Patrick and Jennifer!), we all wish you a Merry (belated) Christmas and Happy 2011!

p.s. – Soon to come in early 2011:  2010 Italy photos (finally!), Adam Radford NYC photo shoot, and photos from the state of Maine.

I’ve owned the domain since college.  Three years ago I re-upped it’s registration and I contracted my good friend Greg Vilines at Webnormous to begin work on the site.   Then a combination of producing an album, playing in a band, get married, and having his house burn down slowed Greg’s progress on the site a bit.  A combination of helping with the album, buying a house, running a photo business, general laziness, and getting engaged slowed me down too.  I know my excuses aren’t as valid as a house fire, but regardless of the timing, it is finally LIVE!

Greg built the whole thing from scratch and he did a damn good job on it.  I know I was a difficult client at times but in the end we got it all worked out.  There will be a few tweaks made in the coming months, but since it’s 99% done, we figured why not launch it?  This will be a soft opening for my six blog readers and facebook friends until I get it 100% finished.

Keep in mind the new site isn’t going to be a replacement for the blog- just think of it as a “best of Alex the Photo Guy.”  I’ll still keep you up to date with my crazy photo antics here on the blog, so don’t stop reading!

Let me know what you think!  Many thanks again to Greg who did all the hard work.  All I did was take a few photos.  If you need a website, let me know and I’ll get you in contact with Webnormous.

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while.  Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for Mr. Blog), I was in Europe for a few weeks.  Keri and I had an amazing time on our first trip ever across the Atlantic.  We arrived back home last Wednesday very late and have been catching up on sleep since.  Sadly, I just uploaded all 2459 photos on my PC just last night, so I haven’t even had time to go through them, let alone edit any.

But, as a fun teaser I figured I’d put up a couple of quick shots from our first day.  Unexpectedly, we ended up in Germany on day 1 instead of our intended destination of Italy.  Buddy passes save a lot of money (seriously, thank you Sarah!), but are the Delta Airlines equivalent of General Motors doling out unicycles to it’s employees as a means of vacation travel.  In the end, Germany was one of our favorite places on the trip thanks to one of my mom’s college friends, her husband, and an all day wine festival.

I’m shooting a wedding tomorrow, so expect further delay on the Europe photos, but for now here are a couple from Stuttgart, Germany:

As expected, I didn’t live blog well enough in KY.  I tried, but just didn’t get enough sleep to warrant staying up even later to write.  We did have a really amazing time and it opened my eyes to the experience of RVing.  I always thought it would be fun, but never occurred to me that having a house on wheels means you’re always at home… even when the A/C goes out at 4am.

First on the schedule Saturday was burger king… please note that not only do they NOT serve breakfast after 10:30, they also do NOT serve breakfast at 10:29 apparently.  Who eats lunch at 10:29!!!  Idiots and Burger King employees- that’s who (really, all major fast food chains too).  After breakfast (Whopper JR and fries), we headed out to Woodford Reserve which turned out to be one of the favorites on the trip.  Good tour, good bourbon.  Here is the cooker that mixes and cooks the first step to make the “distiller’s beer.”

And here’s a fermenter where it gets pumped into, followed by a photo of the guys smelling it.  Smelled more like beer than anything else.

One of the big differences between Bourbon and other types of whiskey is that they are distilled twice in copper stills before aging (3 times at Woodford Reserve as shown here).

All Kentucky bourbon must be aged in new (not used) american oak barrels.  They are also required by law that the ingredients must have at least 51% corn.  They are all charred on the inside to help mellow the flavor.   When they are aged, they are placed in “rick houses” that are always open to the elements.  In the summer, the bourbon expands while the oak pores open up.  The bourbon soaks into the wood extracting flavors.  In the winter, the pores close and squeeze the bourbon back out.  This process goes on until the distillers decide when to bottle.  Once in bottles, the bourbon doesn’t age any further- so if today you you sip on a 10 year old whiskey bottled in 2000 versus a 10 year old whiskey bottled in 2010, the two will have very minor flavor differences.  All bourbons are whiskey, but not all whiskeys are bourbon.

One of the other interesting items found on all of these tours is something called Torula.  It is a creeping fungus commonly found at whiskey distilleries and it eventually coats all of the trees and rick houses.

To be honest, I’m not used to all these “words” on my blog, so I’m just gonna finish up with some pix for the rest of the post- these two of “whiskey creek” at Maker’s Mark.