Westhaven's Whiskey Warmer

A couple weeks ago Josh Collins and the Visit Franklin team (AKA Visit Williamson) challenged their little team of photographers, of which I am part, to create a cinemagraph to help promote Westhaven's Whiskey Warmer Event (Josh also told us if we made one we'd get a couple tickets to the event - nothing like free whiskey to motivate). I've known about cinemagraphs for a couple years now and have seen them making their way into the online marketing and advertising world, but had never tried to create one. So first, what is a cinemagraph? To put it simply, it's what happens if a still photo and a bit of video get together and make a baby. It's a photograph with a video element. And for those that would say it's just a .gif animation, no it's not. It may have a .gif file extension, but let's not confuse the art form. Here are a couple links to the two cinemagraphs I created:

Cinemagraph 1: The Pouring of Whiskey       Cinemagraph 2: The Swirling of Whiskey
 

The Whiskey Warmer event was last night and it was quite an education. I'd like to say that I love and appreciate good Whiskey, Scotch and Bourbon, and can easily tell the difference between those three, but I'd be lying if said that. Speaking of lying, I did tell a white one to Stephen Wilson, Johnnie Walker's Master of Whiskey. The JW station had red, black, gold and a couple others to sample but no green or blue label. I inquired. He said they had no green but intended to break out a bottle of Blue later in the night. Never having had it and knowing that it's around $300/bottle I whispered to the whiskey master that my comrade and I were actually VIPs at the event and we'd like to sample the Blue Label if possible. He gave me a sideways look, and told his assistant to crack open a bottle for us. I'm pretty sure he knew we were not what we said we were, but he played along and treated us to the this rare spirit. Here are some photos from the night.