Ranger Creek .36 Small Caliber Series Texas Bourbon Whiskey

I will say that I am not a big whiskey or bourbon connoisseur, but I am a HUGE craft beer fan, and Ranger Creek makes some of the finest. So when I had an opportunity to hang out and get involved in the craft process, I said, “SURE”!

Ranger Creek’s take on Bourbon Whiskey has thus far been to make it in batches and age them in small barrels. Hence, the name “small caliber” series. You should take a tour and co-founder Mark M or his father can tell you more about the name and it’s significance to Texas history and it’s tie-in to the Texas Rangers.

So, during this Sunday afternoon, we washed bottles, poured the bourbon into the bottles, and then hand labeled and corked each bottle. This is TRULY a hand crafted bourbon, made with care from the distilling process to the labeling and boxing of the bottles.

.36 Caliber Texas Bourbon Whiskey Product Shot

While there, I got to ask a lot of questions about the beers of Ranger Creek and the brewing process. What struck me most about the process is how Ranger Creek sources many of the raw materials used to make their brews locally.

After the hard work was done, one of the co-founders of Ranger Creek, Mark M, uncorked a bottle and gave a little demonstration on how to evaluate a bourbon. As I said, I don’t have much of a palette for whiskey, so it was a welcomed demonstration and tasting.

I now have a nice new bottle of .36 Small Caliber Series Texas Bourbon Whiskey sitting here at home, so I did what any photo geek would do. I set up a product shot! I had a free afternoon, so I took a little time to set up this shot with the idea of advertising in mind, hence the framing to one side. If you look closely (Click on the image to view a larger version) you will see that each bottle has a hand-written label indicating the batch number, the bottle number from that batch, the season, and how long that bottle was aged. This is the 4th batch, the 855th bottle, from Spring 2011, and it was  aged under the Texas sun for 8 months.

I’m definitely going back to Ranger Creek for one of their monthly open houses. I look forward to many more great craft beer and distilled spirits from them! I’m so happy that people like the founders of Ranger Creek know that there is an appetite for something besides Bud Light here in San Antonio!  We have an awesome “brewstillery” here in San Antonio, so get out there and support them!

I love the food at this place but you need to be prepared for a few things:

1. A bit of a wait for a table. Come early for little to no wait on a Sunday though.
2. Come Hungry
3. Be ready for an expanding waist line. It’s oh-so-good, but oh-so-fattening!

San Antonio Breakfast at Taco Haven

My personal favorite is the Weekend Special #1. This includes some delicious barbacoa, potatoes, 2  quesidillas, refried beans,  and eggs.

Being a transplant from the Midwest, I had never heard of this delicacy called barbacoa until I moved to San Antonio in 2006. Most places offer it as a special weekend treat, although you can get it all week long at other joints here in town.

I’m making this article short. I need to get out on my bike and burn off some of these delicious calories!

So, to that end, I am embarking upon the 365 photo project. There are many varieties of this project, but my goal is to post 1 photo a day to my Flickr Stream. I would love to say that I will do a post a day here in my blog, but I am a realist. After working 8 or 9 hours at Rackspace, some nights I then trot over to the other side of San Antonio to teach Cisco networking. So, as you can imagine, time is my most precious commodity.

Psychedelic Cupcakes

That being said, by embarking upon this project, I am forcing myself to “look for the shot” each day as I go about my busy day. This shot, for example, was a tray of psychedelic cupcakes on a co-worker’s desk. The colors caught my eye, and with a little creative depth-of-field and framing, I think I pulled off a great shot using ambient lighting.

There are so many of my images that are unplanned and the only reason that I was able to capture these images was because I had my camera with me. In fact, this image was taken with my oldest camera gear, my trusty old Canon 30d and my plastic-fantastic, nifty-fifty, 50mm 1.8 Canon lens.

Many times, my friends and co-workers ask me, “What is the best camera?”. My answer is simple. The best camera is the one that you HAVE WITH YOU. I can buy the most expensive Hassleblad digital camera worth tens-of-thousands of dollars, but if it’s at home in a nice, safe case, it’s worthless. So, even if it’s just your mobile phone, you can grab a moment in time that can never be relived.

Cafe Du Monde - New Orleans Cafe Au Lait and Beignets

Ok, off my soapbox. Here is one that I also captured with my nifty-fifty and old Canon 30d in the oldest “Cafe Au Lait and beignets” joint in New Orleans, Cafe Du Monde. (Hey, it was 7 am and WAAAAY too early to drink beer, even in the Big Easy). Here I have a creative use of white balance, purposely leaving the image a tad yellow to mimic the feel of a real, old coffee joint and the OLD section of New Orleans. Again, the best camera was the one I had in my bag!

Of course, from time to time, I get the itch to play with some creative uses of lighting and tabletop photography. Look for a lot more tabletop shots from me this year. It’s really fun taking children’s toys or dolls and creating a story or a scene by using dramatic lighting and a few creative props.

Pop Culture: Mr. Snuffleupagus loves Domo!

I will leave you with my favorite of 2011. Yes, that’s Mr. Snuffleupagus and a Japanese DOMO! I love pop culture and mixing pop culture genres is a lot of fun! As you probably guessed, this was shot around Valentine’s day, so I added one more pop culture reference: The chalky valentines day candy that I always got at school on Valentine’s day.

All right, hold me to it. More blog posts in 2012!!

Happy shooting!

cafe de monde new orleans creative tabletop photography

Creative Tabletop Photography Light Control

Creative tabletop photography

Baby Photography San Antonio Professional affordable

What else is there to say about a cute baby really, besides; Let the images do the talking!

Images Created for Nicholas’s Family and Friends :

Nicholas Aaron Perez at 1 Month

Nicholas Aaron Perez at 1 Month

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

This was quite a sight. How do you put into words the emotions that a place makes you feel? I guess I’ll just rely on my photographs for that. Right near the Reichstag in Berlin, you will find the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Yes, that is what it is called, and it leaves no question as to what happened and what the memorial is about.

The location of this memorial is not accidental. It is located right near the Reichstag. The members of parliament must drive by it everyday on their way to make the laws for Germany at the Reichstag and are reminded how the German parliament granted a mad man “emergency powers” and sealed the fate of Europe and millions and millions of Jews, intellectuals, homosexuals, dissenters, and gypsies.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The memorial is in a former DMZ area of the Berlin Wall, which worked out splendidly, because there were no buildings to speak of on this block. New Jersey architect Peter Eisenman designed the memorial. I learned a lot about this memorial through my tour guide Francis, a New Zealander with a degree in German History. Listen to his story about the memorial, as it is quite remarkable and not without controversy.

If you don’t take the time to see the video, here is the synopsis: there was an open invitation for artists to design a memorial. After many awful (and some not so awful) ideas, Eisenman proposed a maze, with the idea of getting lost and separated from your loved ones with which you entered the maze.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The directors of the project liked the idea but were afraid too many people would get genuinely lost and panic. Instead, there are these monoliths starting from very short to extremely tall. As you move deeper into the monument, the  more oppressive and intimidating the monoliths get and you still get that “lost feeling”, however you can exit the memorial in any direction if you get too panicked.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

From Wikipedia: “An attached underground “Place of Information” (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.”

What else is there to say about such a place?

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe