Building A Better Bar

It’s the start of a new year, and I’m really excited about all of the photography I’m going to be shooting in 2013. My calendar is filling up again now that the wheels of industry are getting moving again after a long holiday vacation, and as we get really to roll up our sleeves and get to work, I wanted to share one of my last big projects from 2012.

As regular readers of my blog have probably determined, I’m a big fan of cocktails. When I’m out at a cocktail bar, I’m always looking to try more experimental drinks and the so-called fancy cocktails that are a staple in a lot of bars these days. When I’m at home, I usually turn to my standard cocktail (although Irish Whiskey in a glass isn’t technically a cocktail, since I’m pretty sure that a drink has to have at least three ingredients to be called a cocktail) but a recent project for Feast magazine has me thinking that I need to up my game a bit. The article, Building a Better Bar by Matt Sorrell outlines all of the stuff that you need to include in an ideal home bar … and my bar suddenly seemed quite boring by comparison. Read the article, it will definitely be helpful if having a well stocked bar at home is important to you. How many kinds of booze do you have? Garnishes? Bitters? How about shrubs? Got the right tools for the job?

This was a really fun project. We borrowed a really great cart to use as our portable home bar and stocked it full of booze, glassware, and all manor of other things that every home bar needs. If I didn’t already have a bar here in the studio I would seriously consider the merits of a bar cart, particularly one as cool as the one we used for the shoot.

All in all this was a fantastic project to work on. Happy 2013!