A few weeks ago Kim Sturdavant, the brewmaster at Social Kitchen & Brewery in San Francisco, asked me to shoot a bunch of promotional images of their interior, food, beer and a few portraits. Up until now, most of my photos are captured in a more documentary mode. I usually prefer to capture moments as they happen, but thought this would be a good challenge. It was also a great excuse to bring out my lighting kit for the first time.

This image is my first formal portrait using an off camera flash with an umbrella. We didn’t do a lot to stage the shot. Kim had some brand new kegs lying around and had just filled his glass with Pilsner from a fermentor. I positioned the kegs, pointed the flash through a white umbrella, and then rattled of about 30 shots with two different lenses. Kim did his best to act natural with a few different poses.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results. I’ll probably make a few changes to my setup next time, but this experience was a good start. This might be the beginning of a new series of brewer portraits, which I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time.