Lasoski

. : Girl in the Moon : . WPC 2011 week 5 --D. Lasoski

My picture for "sign" was found while not really looking. I mean, I took my camera with me this night to take pictures, but not thinking about the photo challenge at all. Just to document what was a fun "gig" with some friends of mine.** I was mainly excited to see what kind of pictures I could gather with my new prime lens (35mm f/1.8). But once I started taking pictures, I knew I was going to use one from this set.

**Note: this is an inside joke. No I'm not going to explain it here. Bingo.

So, I live right next door to the Magnolia Bar & Grill, lovingly refered to by regulars as Mag Bar. This is what I can best describe as an original dive bar. As in not trying to be hip and portray the image of dive bar. It has hints of a neighborhood bar (old regulars who stumble to and from their homes a short walk away) and a college bar (it is not too far north of the part of Old Louisville that houses college kids living in large old drafty houses that have been converted to small old drafty apartments), and probably a mix of other bar genres as well; but its soul is basically dive.

I really don't frequent the place much at all. It just isn't my scene.

Mag Bar isn't necessarily a bad bar, though. I don't want to make that seem like my message.

Anyways, I don't know if there ever was a "grill" part of "bar & grill", but it isn't there anymore. You can't order food at this bar. But as a dive bar, they do have cheap drinks, and PBR and Miller High Life flow abundantly, as well as a good selection of local brews (BBC, NABC, and the recently revived "new" Falls City draft). Lately they've been playing live music there in addition to the supposedly legendary jukebox which can be very loud if they want it to be. (the live music may be because of this) Reading some of the websites online this is the kind of bar that kids frequented when they lived here and will come back to see long after they move away to relive the good ole days.

Anyways, the reason I was going to Mag Bar was to hear one of my friend's brother's band: Slithering Beast. I'd try to explain the band to you, but the website does a better job.

So that is the back drop of this story. The rest I'll tell using the help of my camera and it's thousand-word bursts of verbosity:

A view of the front of Mag Bar, and its iconic signs on a Saturday night

For contrast, a similar view the next morning

The neon sign advertising a non-existant grill

I almost decided to use the neon red entrance sign as my challenger for this week.

The back of the bar from the outside. Pool players can be seen through the glass windows

Now--remember I said that High Life flows abundantly at this bar?

I meant it.

They are certified, and proud.

They are also extremely decked out in Miller High Life signs and paraphernalia. For example they prominently display their certified purveyorship of the high life.

Another cool multi-hued neon High Life sign inside

This sign features the newer version of the legendary "Girl in the Moon" logo.

This version of "GitM" is closer to the one that adorns the "Tall Blonde" bottle of the High Life. Another one that I almost decided to use as the challenger.

From the back showing the various signs up front: Falls City, Coors, Jameson, & Miller, along with the neat yellow rotating newer High Life GitM sign

A Miller High Life mirror, using the older Miller Logo branding

Now, this is a picture I could never have taken with any old camera or lens. Aperture open to f/1.8, shutter speed 1/3 of a second, 3200 ISO and NO FLASH. It might be a little noisy, but you can see in the other pictures how dark the bar is. You'd never know the walls are that shade of green.


Ahhh...the HIGH LIFE.

Various other beer/liquor signs on the wall. Blue Moon, Sierra Nevada, Murphy's, Harp, Bushmills, and I believe another High Life sign

That is my friend Hollan, who graduated from high school with me. He was watching the band, while I was snapping pics.

Kate is chillaxing. She is also: my friend, Hollan's wife, the lead singer's brother, and the steel guitarist's daughter, all wrapped into one.

Kate probably didn't know I was taking this picture. But she looks contemplative. I like the differnt light hues behind her.

Close up of the craziness behind the bar. Is that J. Edgar Hoover?

The keep, with the two neat "chalk board" signs behind the bar that constantly shifted color

Wider and lighter (too light?) view of the "back bar" and the crazy decorations above it

Here you can actually see Kate's brother Nick, and their Dad (I think)

This next shot was the 3rd one I almost decided to use for "sign". As you can see, I really liked a lot of the signs at the bar. I was having quite a bit of fun taking all these pictures.

Probably too much.

Having a shorter shutter speed (1/200 s) allowed me to get a very crisp shot of the draft beer "chalk board", as well as the beer bottles on display along with various liquors. The cymbal-smashing monkey is silhoutted in front of the blue draft beer chalkboard.

yummy local draft beer featured on tap

You didn't think I'd keep showing all of these beer signs without taking some pictures of actual beer, did you?

The High Life and the Blue Ribbon Winner, both from Milwaukee

And here it is, finally: the Miller High Life sign that I have fallen in love with. Using the older version of the Girl in the Moon Logo, it has interactive lights. If I could have any beer sign in the whole world, this would be it.

. : Girl in the Moon Pre-processed : .

[ + / - ] What are the differences?This one probably took longer than it should. I played around a lot with curves trying to get the whole scene to darken while keeping the higher end (yellows and reds) light. This worked well for the sign itself, but it made the background with the traffic light very weird looking. So I had to select just that area and edit it backwards some to make it look somewhat normaly again. There is definitely a loss of detail there now (I don't know what happened to the blog in the top right of the picture--tried to fix it to no real avail), but oh well, I'm happy with the rest. You can still see some remnants of the work I did, along the brown wood corner guard. Especially near the top where I forgot to select out part of whatever is hanging there. I also went back and made the picture in the bottom right white again. This picture is during the sequence where the blue "star" lights are illuminated. Even though it appears in the edited photo the Miller and the girl and the moon and the cloud and the high life logo are all glowing, they aren't yet. They will in the next sequence. Also the blue star lights get brighter. This continues as everything gets brighter and the right arm moves forward (via lights) to make a cheers/toast gesture. You can see some of this in the next 2 pictures. I'm happy with this photoshop job, although I really need to work on not trying to make it so perfect. I may be overdoing it a tad with the saturation and contrast, etc. Maybe someone will give me constructive criticism. I also don't know why I had the wb set to manual, or the metering at spot really. I must have been messing around with different settings and forgot to change them back.

[ + / - ] show/hide pre-processed

. : Girl in the Moon : . WPC 2011 week 5 --D. Lasoski

The next sequence, the moon and girl's dress is outlined with lights, along with the Miller logo. Blue "stars" are getting brighter.

Next sequence for the sign everything is brighter and she's making a toast. Too much camera shake here...

15 s exposure. Apparently, I like to mess around with moving the camera during a long exposure for all of my challenges.

I probably shouldn't have tried to use such a long exposure at the end there (2.5s), not sure what I was going for.

And I end with this artsy glowing orbs picture. I really like it, especially with the vivid colors and the semi-charmed life aspect.

Floating orbs of light. Vivid!

Labels: beer, d, friends, lights, long exposure, Mag Bar, Miller High Life, music, Old Louisville, sign, WPC 2011, WPC entry