SUIP!
A young man's misadventures with South Africa's beers, bars and breweries.
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These two photos from a night out at Belgo in London’s Covent Garden in January came out from a reel of film shot in my LC-A. After a DIY mishap a couple weeks back, my LC-A took a tumble, briefly exposing the film which was still inside. Luckily half of my shots survived.
That’s me and my brother Christopher, who runs Digitalgetti, an excellent food photo blog. He’s more easily impressed by glassware than mouth feel, but he’s a good drinking buddy nonetheless.
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When I feel like making myself feel bad about myself, I try to take photos. Like brewing beer, I feel like photography has become a skill that is under-appreciated. To take a good photo with film, which I’ve been trying to do for three years, is quite a difficult thing, especially if you’re used to the convenience of digital cameras. I’m not a good photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I really like to try.1
Back in March, my housemate James and I went to the We Love Real Beer Festival, held at the Old Biscuit Mill on Albert Road in Woodstock. It’s a really interesting space with great boutiques and an excellent gourmet goods and fresh produce market held every Saturday morning.
Every six months or so, a bunch of craft brewers, mostly from the Cape, come here to showcase their wares. The usual suspects are in attendance - Jack Black, Mitchell’s, Brewers&Union et al. - along with some smaller breweries with specialist brews, including, as I found to my pleasure, a man with a beard selling big bottles of honey mead. Inside, a healthy crowd remained throughout to guzzle a wide variety of weissbiers, stouts, ales and lagers. Outside, a healthy crowd of taxi drivers waited with dollar signs in their eyes.
Although this was a good few months before I envisioned the beginnings of this blog, I brought along a (bad) camera and took a few snaps that - I hope - can give you an idea, however distorted and fuzzy, of the festival. It’s definitely worth the R30 entrance on arrival and the crippling hangover on departure.
The next festival will be held at the Old Biscuit Mill on Friday 30 September 2011, and it’s touted to be the biggest yet, so I suggest you save the date!
Oh, your entrance fee also includes a draught glass you get to keep. It’s a really nice touch.
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1As an aside: I used to love Lomography, a hip worldwide film photography community, but <hipster> I have a feeling it’s becoming more and more about pretty cameras and self-gratification than about becoming a better photographer </hipster>. I was also once a huge fan of The Impossible Project, a Dutch collective that saved the original Polaroid factory in the Netherlands, and who now produce film for once-defunct instant cameras. Their products are prohibitively expensive, though, and their films aren’t yet stable enough or of a high enough quality yet to invite my continued investment. Each to his own, I guess. tl;dr photography is weird.
