Though they may look like a faraway planet, these remarkable photos are actually of the bottom of a whisky glass.
Photographer Ernie Button has been examining the bottom of his whisky glass for the past 15 years in a project he calls Vanishing Spirits. PetaPixel covered him over 10 years ago but the photographer has since released a book and shot hundreds more empty glasses in that time.
“The project began innocently enough,” Button tells PetaPixel. “After enjoying a dram of Scotch whisky the night before, the glasses were left out on the table overnight. When I collected them in the morning to put them in the dishwasher, I noticed something in the bottom of the glass and when I held it up to the light, I noticed these fine lines in the glass.”
Button uses different colored gels to breathe fresh life into his abstract images; otherwise all of the photos would all be a whitish-gray color.
“I first got the idea by using a variety of lights to illuminate the patterns at the bottom of the glass,” he explains.
“Some were a cooler blue and others were a warmer yellow and when I would mix them in the setup, it would heighten the visual impact of the image.”
The key to the longevity of the project is that Button continues to find the different patterns fascinating. At this point, Button and his wife have drunk thousands of glasses of whisky.
“Through the years and hundreds of whiskies that I’ve experimented with, I’ve only found a few whiskies (less than five) that didn’t provide a pattern,” he says.
“So nearly all whiskies work for this project. But I’ve found that different types of barrels help to create different patterns. A whisky that is aged in a bourbon barrel will produce fine/thin repetitive lines whereas a sherry cask will provide thicker repetitive lines.
“A big thing in the Scotch world for the past decade or two are finishing casks. The whisky spends most of its time in one cask and then it is transferred to a different type of cask e.g. cognac, wine, rum, etc. for a few months to a few years. That can impact the taste of course but can also impact the final drying pattern.”
Button has also photographed other aged spirits which also have to be a high ABV and aged in a cask. Anejo tequila, rum, vodka, cognac, and aged gin can also provide interesting patterns.
“Lately I have been experimenting with Japanese whisky which is typically made with rice instead of barley and initially I thought it was the rice that was accounting for the significant differences,” he adds.
“But I recently tried Hakata brand whisky which is made from 100% barley and I expected it to dry like a Scotch whisky; it did not. So it may have something to do with Koji which is a fungus that transforms the base ingredient’s starches into fermentable sugars.”
Button’s book, The Art of Whisky, is published by Chronicle Books and is currently available on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
More of his work can be found on his website and Instagram.
Image credits: Photographs by Ernie Buton