In-ger-lund

Last year one of my favourite beers (Old Hooky from the wonderful Hook Norton Brewery) started to appear on the supermarket shelves with a St George's Cross on the bottle cap in place of the usual brewery logo. Apparently this had something to do with a football tournament that was happening during the summer of 2010 and was presumably a marketing effort to encourage the drinking of beer whilst cheering on the national team to glory. Oh well, I guess a 50% success rate isn't too bad.

It struck me that a beer bottle top with the English national flag on the top could be used to illustrate a number of concepts surrounding patriotism, drinking culture and unrealistic expectations(!) so I began to collect the tops with a view to producing some stock photographs. After a few nights of drinking beer (sometimes this is a tough job) I had collected enough bottle caps to make some images, one of which is presented below.

In-ger-lund

This version has been post processed a bit as the original was a bit flat looking on white. Cooling the colour temperature, ramping up the clarity and taking out a bit of saturation together with a vignette effect gives a bit more interest together with a contemporary feel. It remains to be seen how well it will sell but I feel quite optimistic that there is a market for this type of shot.

Now does anyone know when the next World Cup starts?

Tweet