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13. January 2024
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Men still drinking beer – reenactment @Vaat Brewery

The first known picture of men drinking beer is dated back to 1843! Wow, that’s a looooong time ago. But why do I know that? And what do I have to do with this very old photo? And what’s the Vaat Brewery? Let me tell you the story.

PubQuiz at Vaat Brewery in Tallinn

In August 2023 I hosted a pub quiz at the 👉 Vaat Brewery in Tallinn (you definitely should try the beer!). And of course there were a lot of questions about photography, how surprising 😁 In my research I stumbled upon a photo from 1843, where three men are drinking beer and having kinda fun. First I was happy to find a beer related photo for my pub quiz. But at the day of the pub quiz, as I prepared everything and went through all the questions for a last check, I realized, that the Vaat Brewery was founded by three men. And it is the year 2023, exactly 180 years later. Coincidence or a sign from the beer god? Anyhow, I visioned directly a photo of a reenactment of that very old picture with the three founders of Vaat. I suggested the idea and in December we Finally (also a 👉 yummy beer from Vaat) managed to gather all the three founders for a photo shoot.

Preparation

When it comes to a reenactment you have to be prepared! We really wanted it to be a modern adaption of the old photo. The location was obviously the tap room of the Vaat Brewery. But instead looking for all the original probs and clothes, we decided to use the current once to underline, that there’s an evolution. The world changes, but men are still drinking beer 😁.

This was the easy part. But how to get the three guys in the same position? Howe can I manage it? Luckily I found a feature in the software for controlling my camera, where I can overlap an image to the live view of the camera. But just overlapping the original photo would have been to distracting for the guys in front of the camera. So I created a transparent an image with just a view but important outlines, which I could overlap to the live view. I mirrored my laptop screen to my iPad, so that they all could see the live view with the overlapping outlines. Now they could try to fit the outlines in order to come as close as possible to the original photo.

Reenactment and photo shooting

On the 23rd of December we met at the tap room and I started preparing the set. Once everything was figured out we could start with the photo shoot. After every shot we compared the original with our result. And I must say these guys were super patient and made a very big effort to make this photo awesome. The outlines helped a lot and we only needed nine shots to make it nearly perfect.

Editing

In 1843 I would have gone to the darkroom to develop my photos. Nowadays I sit at my laptop and do the post processing. But the big question for me was, what kind of style should be the final result. Of course I wanted to create a look and feel which matches the vintage vibe. But I also was curious about other versions. As I came up with the idea I thought I would do the vintage style and a modern black and white editing. But after creating the vintage style I thought, why not try out some other stuff. I always wanted to hand color a black and white photo like they did in former times. So I started to paint over a black and white version I created. I must admit, this was really hard work, but loved it. And I do love the result. Not only because I spend so many hours on it, I think it has a beautiful style. Different to any automatic filter or Photoshop plugin. I should do this more often…