When I'm here, I'm a guy who shares his love of bourbon, american whiskey and other spirits in their many forms. Whether that is drinking, cooking, tasting, visiting, touring or just thinking about them doesn't really matter much. But when I'm not here, I do other things.

I'm a designer during the day. I make the things that most sane people actively try to ignore (advertising, in it's many forms) hence the drinking. I kid...mostly.

I'm a builder of pretty furniture-type things when my wife insists.

I'm a photographer when the spirit moves me. I even have another site (yellowswanphoto.com) where I keep the photo blog I've been keeping for...wow...almost five years now.

And it's my love of photography (and the many power tools I own) that made me want to try doing something a little different with their presentation. I found this blog post while trolling through the interwebs (How to Transfer Prints to Wood) and was immediately struck with the desire to try it myself. Unlike what the author of the post said, I prefer doing my black and white prints on a color laser printer as it has a bit more fine detail and the reddish color that results is a pretty good match for the wood tones with no need for staining the wood after.

After searching for a suitable test photo, I landed on a couple of my favorites from my Bourbon Trail vacation in 2011. I mean they are photos of wood, printed on wood. It just made too much sense.

This is a photo taken in the Wild Turkey Distillery's bottle filling facility.

You'd never guess it, but this was taken while visiting the Woodford Reserve distillery last year. Or maybe you would guess it.

These photos were each transferred to a 1"x6" pine board picked up at my local Home Depot that I then cut down to 4.5" tall. Be aware if you try this yourself, if you aren't careful with putting on a smooth layer of glue, you get places where the photo just won't transfer which is much more awesomely random than trying to distress it after the fact. I had others that were perfect...and boring.

So yes, even though this is only tangentially related to bourbon or whiskey, I felt it might be of interest to those who had an interest in bourbon. And heck it's my blog anyway.

I orginally posted this as a comment on the Bourbon & Banter website. Thought I’d put it here too.

My bourbon journey started with a hot Sunday afternoon almost 2 years ago. In Minnesota you can’t buy any alcohol, but 3.2% beer on a Sunday. Being from Wisconsin, I can’t bring myself to drink that. So since I was out of beer, couldn’t buy any, and really wanted a cold one I was inspired by my then new favorite show, Mad Men, to check out what was in the liquor cabinet. Most of it had been there forever. A rum, a vodka, a few liqueurs that were so old that the cap wouldn’t come off. I looked at what I had, ran to the store to buy some club soda, made my self a drink (once I got home) and decided I liked cocktails. Things were going pretty good, I’d even found a way to keep a cocktail in the diet once I’d decided I’d needed to lose weight. I was exploring my way through the various categories in the liquors store. Gins, vodkas, tonics, syrups, various liqueurs. Never did get a taste for rum.

Then I took a vacation. Due to my new found love of spirits, I looked and found a few craft distilleries along my route from Minnesota to Georgia. One of which was MB Roland located in the little tail of Kentucky (@MBRDISTILLERY on twitter, love those guys). I hadn’t made it to the whiskey section of the liquor store yet so I bought a bottle of the Malt Whiskey he was selling. I put it in the luggage and forgot about it until I got home.

Once I got home, I decided to substitute this Malt Whiskey for my usual cocktail while watching Mad Men. I’d paid a lot for the little bottle, so I decided to not mix this and to try it straight. I’d heard that people did that with whiskey. One sip and I was hooked. I loved it. It was sweet without adding sugar, it was spicy and flavorful without bitters. I was shocked and I continued to sip on that little bottle until I realized that if I didn’t find anything to switch it up with, I’d be out really soon. And since he was a craft distiller, I’d have a long drive back to Kentucky if I wanted more. So I stopped by the liquor store to get another bottle of whiskey. Didn’t know what I wanted. Scotch was too expensive. So bourbon. I’d heard there were some good ones of that.

I have no idea what I bought first. I do know that I liked whatever it was enough that within a few weeks, I’d bought Wild Turkey, Woodford Reserve, Maker’s Mark holiday gift packs. I also knew that as sad as I was to admit it, these bourbons were a lot more to my liking than the Malt Whiskey that had turned me on to whiskey in the first place. From that point on, I’ve been inspired to try every new kind I can. I’m up to 16 bourbons, 4 ryes, 2 non-bourbon experimental whiskies (from a craft distiller) and one quasi-local Irish Whiskey to help me celebrate St. Patty’s Day. My wife has had to put me on a whiskey budget each month (roughly $80 so I can get some of the higher end ones) and I’ve devoured every book on the history or how to make bourbon. I am fascinated my the stuff. I’m also a Bourbon Evangelist.

And I’m loving it.

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