STILL LIFE 81 – GLASS OF BEER

 

 

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A glass (actually several glasses) of beer with lunch, in a local pub which produces quite simple, tasty food.

I say beer, but actually its lager, and (to my shame) actually its Stella Artois.  OK, OK, I may be something of a beer snob, but the simple fact is that I like beers (and one or two lagers too) that have great mouthfuls of fine flavours and aftertastes – so that I am, or course, more or less married to the beers of Belgium.  OK, OK (again, again!), Stella Artois is Belgian too, and if its adequate (if a little strong) for washing down food with – cold soda water does just as well really –  it cannot compare at all with Belgium’s real, quality beers, which have an almost unimaginable variety of truly wonderful flavours.

My favourites?  Well, my staple is the pale Duvel, a Belgian classic, which at 8.5% alcohol is really not something you knock back in pints!  Not unless you yourself want to be on your back too of course.  And then there are the Dubbel and the Tripel produced by the Trappist monastery at Westmalle.  I’m not a gourmet, I’m not sure I have a very sensitive palate, but I simply glory in these beers and many others.

Technique: anyway, we went for lunch in this pub and, as usually happens, there was a delay between ordering our food and receiving it.  And sitting there, sipping our drinks and chatting, there was time to look around at everything.  My wife had her back to the window and I was facing into the light, so that my glass of drink shone golden in front of me.  So out came the relatively small and unobtrusive G11 and, looking down into its wonderful, fully articulated screen, the golden chalice looked good.  But, unless I filled the frame with the drink, there might well arise problems with obtrusive things in the background which, even if not in focus, can completely ruin any image.  So it was a question of manoeuvring from side to side around the glass to find a simple and relatively unobtrusive backdrop – that either would not disrupt the picture as it was, or which could have its obtrusive features subdued by post-processing.  I ended up with a compromise between these two outcomes.

Click onto the image to open a larger version in a separate window.

Technique: Canon G11 PowerShot at 140mm (equiv); 1600 ISO; Lightroom; 10 Feb 2017.
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