Photo from November 11, 2006

I had recently broken up and moved away from my girlfriend so I was spending time in a still-unpacked new temporary apartment, so I decided to take up some hobbies besides running or cycling. This meant cooking and drinking.

I decided to start mixing drinks again. It was best to start with the basics, and nothing is more basic than a classic dry martini. While my parents gin of choice was Beefeater, I’ve always been a fan of Bombay Sapphire—mostly just because of its distinctive blue bottle. If I start there and understand that presentation is the most important part of a drink, getting just the right martini glass to go along with it immediately follows.

I was toasting the close of an old life and the start of a new one. Odd that I had to down this drink alone at this watershed moment in my life, something I never do.

The only photo I processed this day was the appletini I made earlier. It was terribly sweet so I made this one later to wash it down. I’m not a fan of olives, I used a lemon twist instead. The gin and glass were kept in the freezer—a habit of my college days of mixing and drinking kamikaze shots.

I don’t have image or the processing formula I made for the appletini—that particular image has since been lost. For this one, I went standard. Not sure why I photographed with my LX1, but I guess I was too drunk to use my dSLR and needed its built in wide angle image stabilization. While I shot other compositions, I chose the diagonal frame to reflect the out-of-balance nature of alcohol. I’m told diagonal lines create a sense of drama.

The processing is a simple Lightroom process to get contrast, detail, and fix noise. Nothing fancy here. Also I had to manually white balance things, which is easy because I had something white in the photograph to sample.