(Based on a true life event, Compton MacKenzie's story of a shipwreck full of whisky in the Hebrides was also made into a famous film)

Hehehe...it's a proven scientific fact that you can never have too much uisge beatha in the house!! Here we have from the left: Canadian Club Classic 12yr old; Crown Royal Canadian Whisky; Highland Park 16yr old single malt; Highland Park 15yr old single malt; Jim Beam Black Label Bourbon; The Famous Grouse (my 'cooking whisky'); Isle of Jura 10yr old single malt; and finally the lovely Irish Tullamore Dew Heritage Blend. Not in this picture is a nice bottle (is there any other kind?) of Glenmorangie - it's not in the picture because it was hiding behind the pasta and rice in the pantry and I overlooked it in my haste to set up the shot...

Blimey! This was involved, to say the least - and I was almost distracted by the subjects many times, but I put my art first and struggled on, despite my thirst!! I took three shots, each one illuminated by the off-camera flash in a different position (at the back left, at back right and in the back middle). I combined all three in CS3, erasing the unwanted bits until I'd achieved the right light across the frame. Flattened the image; created three duplicate layers - first one, I changed the Blending Mode to Screen and reduced the Opacity to around 25%. The second I changed the Blending Mode to Multiply, reduced Opacity to around 80% and added Gaussian Blur at 10%. Back to the first duplicate layer - I converted it to B&W via the Infrared pre-set; onto the second - B&W conversion via the High Contrast Red Filter pre-set. The third duplicate layer I moved to the bottom of the layers stack and added a Diffuse Glow to it to really make the highlights sing. A subtle almost-desaturation of the third layer has produced a lovely ochre glow. Lastly, I flattened the whole image and resized.

Perhaps more worrying than how long I spent faffing and fettling around trying to get this pic right, is the fact that The Famous Grouse is dangerously, nay apolyptically low! Crivens!

Friday 22md's alcohol-fuelled-riotous-assembly entry to the Challenge; click here for other monochromed Pbasers in January