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Eye Candy Beer Blogs

Words are great, but sometimes, pictures are better.

As part of what is turning into a series, here’s a collection of show-not-tell beer- and pub-related blogs you might want to add to your reader (we use Feedly these days) or just bookmark for a slow Friday afternoon in the office.

1. Oh Beautiful Beer

A showcase for all kinds of beer-related graphic design from around the world. If you run a bar or brewery, it’s a great way to get a sense of overall trends. (But it also brings home just how identikit ‘hip’ branding can be…)

2. Beer Lens

Robert Gale and Kim Reed take gorgeous photographs of pubs and bars, primarily in the US and UK, and it’s easy to get lost in the archives for an hour or two. Sadly, because they’re so good, their photos get ‘borrowed’ rather too often — if you want to use them, ask nicely, and/or pay up!

3. The Dimpled Mug

The Dimpled Mug. (Screengrab.)

Where Beer Lens perhaps skews towards trendier settings, the Dimpled Mug is resolutely committed to photographing down-at-heel wet-led boozers, especially in the north of England and Scotland. This is what most pubs really look like.

4. A Hauf Stop

A Hauf Stop. (Screengrab.)

This blog dedicated to images of Glasgow doesn’t only focus on pubs and bars but they get plenty of attention in panoramic images stitched together from multiple photos. Often, the photographer’s point of view plonks you in the corner of a pub, mid-afternoon, with a pint in front of you — lovely!

5. Brookston Beer Bulletin: Beer in Ads

Detail from a vintage ad posted at the Brookston Beer Bulletin.

Most days, Jay Brooks posts a vintage advertising image or two two this sub-section of his long-running beer blog, many of them drawn from the golden age of colour magazine illustration. The image above is a detail from a recent post.

If we’ve missed any good ones, let us know below.

10 replies on “Eye Candy Beer Blogs”

Yes, although I must admit, I’d primarily focused on the words there, though the pictures are very nice.

It is nice. I’d guess that 90 per cent of it is down to him using a pro camera; and having the nerve to ask permission, set up his shot properly, and take his time over it. Most of us just snap with smartphones of point’n’clicks, and then run.

heya – yes, I do shoot worth a pro setup, albeit a minimal one. All a single fixed lens (usually 50mm 1.2) on a 5D Mark III.

I do take some very intentional shots once in awhile (Critical Drinking interviews are portraits for example), but if you’ve ever met a brewer, you’d realize that they’re not the posing type. Indeed, almost all the shots are done in a slap-dash fashion that requires me to watch and anticipate to see the moment as its happening. I was always inspire more by National Geographic than fashion mags. I ask for unfettered access whenever I can get it, so most of what makes my work feel set up is probably just because I’m able to be alone with my thoughts in a brewery while they work rather than having a PR or marketing person gabbing in my ear and pointing at things that THEY think are interesting.

God I love Brew Bokeh (Michael Donk). No one shoots hardware as well as that guy does, in my humble opinion. If he’s shot a brewery before me, it changes everything I see. I really enjoy walking around a brewery with his images in my head. “He stood here, he saw this, ah, I see it now too…”

Just noticed this and your comment that Dimpled Mug is “resolutely committed to photographing down at heel…boozers”. Don’t know where you got “down at heel” from – most of these pubs are well kept, well used and feature on either CAMRA’s National or Regional Inventories. Guess you’ve not visited any of these so just jumped to a wrong conclusion – not your finest hour.

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