Swat teams

Barrel rollin’

Meet Jimmy Johnson. The 92-year-old has done every millionth barrel of bourbon for Buffalo Trace since the end of Prohibition. This was the company’s sixth. Johnson’s last was rolling of the millionth barrel was 27 years ago. The next one is expected in about 20 years.

A very raw bourbon takes about five to six years. Quality bourbons are at least six or seven. While I don’t claim to be an expert, I know that the really good bourbon is around eight. So you can see that the longer the better. Well they expect to keep this one for at least 10 years and up to 12 and it will be used for some type of special edition bourbon.

Being on a distillery was very cool. A brewery and a distillery in one week. I had been to other breweries, but never a distillery. The smell is something you wouldn’t likely forget.

Check out the multimedia piece I did.

McConnell Springs

Picture above: not really that great. I figured the bubbling water would represent a natural spring, which believe it or not, McConnell Spring is.

Picture above: not that great. Pretty light. Pretty path. Pretty trees. Pretty darn cliche.

Picture above: Probably my favorite. But probably still about 13 notches below what I expect of myself.

Thinking outside of the box

The site of scissors on red ribbon can be cliche. So in order to keep me from shooting the ordinary, my photo editor challenged me by saying to shoot outside of the box. I think it was good advice. It pushed me not to rely on it, even though I hope I wouldn’t have anyway.

But even so, here is my ribbon picture. I, of course, like the top one better. You can see my slideshow at heraldleaderphoto.com, or by clicking here for the direct link. What I did get was a couple of pretty landscape photos. They aren’t Ansel Adams any more than these are James Nachtwey, but I’ll show them to you later anyways.

And just like that it had begun

I showed up for my first true day of work and just like that, I had an assignment.

I guess it was all ready waiting on me, but I thought I wouldn’t have anything today. I’m glad I did, but I just figured today would be getting reacquainted with the Herald-Leader’s methods and getting my badge (which I don’t have so I will continue to meet the entire security crew at the paper, but that’s no big deal).

I’m glad I got an assignment though, because this one was cool. It was a biking event for Bike Lexington where people get together for free beer at Kentucky Ale Brewery then ride to different restaurants around town. I give my props to Shane Tedder and the other organizers for such a cool even, and actually all of the events they have been working on since February.

I left early to get all of the shots of them actually biking. The only one that didn’t come from that is the lights, which I only snatched for a detail. I thought it combined the idea of bikes and beer well enough. I know this event wasn’t about beer so much as making Lexington more bike friendly, but everyone else seemed to be pretty excited about free brews.

So welcome back. It’s not Beyond the map stars anymore, but it’s still an adventure. Summer is here, and I’m exploring the world once again. New experiences every day, and then to Europe (which if someone will tell me if wireless works the same in Europe or not, I want to do a travel blog again). Together, we, the young people, are going to conquer this idea of journalism dying. It’s only as true as we let it be. We just need a few innovative brains on how we can overcome (One, Two, Three).