When I open a bottle of wine to photograph I always wonder what will it look like. Will it look like how I experienced it – smooth or harsh, as example.

And then there are times when a winery gives me samples to photograph and I have had no tasting experience of the wine, then what? Are these less biased pictures?

As a scientist in the lab I knew well that we influence our results. Sure, statistics tells us whether the result is mere chance or something more meaningful. So I’ve wondered whether I impact the photographs. I certainly do by what I choose to show you, a client, my friends.

Yet always I search for beauty. And when I got back into this business after leaving it for medical science and teaching, I discovered that what I call beautiful someone else ignores as bland.

Is there universal beauty or is there only our individual interpretation that matters? Is a sunset always an emotionally positive aesthetic?

I am sure I will spend the rest of my years trying to figure it out. In the meantime I will share some ‘bathing beauties’ of wine I have uncovered.

I didn’t taste this wine but its my most current BFF wine portrait –