Inspiration: Strange Brew?

I'm certainly not above any idea. Especially when it comes to taking inspiration from the screwball comedy Strange Brew. This idea was brewed up (sorry for the pun) while I was working on photo color correcting a picture taken of the old Schmidt's/Landmark Brewery on West 7th in St. Paul.

It happened to be late one night when my wife was scrolling through instant stream Netflix and came upon Strange Brew. I had seen snippets of it before, but never in it's entirety. Not only was the film good, it was also educational. I never knew you could grow a mouse inside an empty bottle of beer and get a full refund.

So earlier that day I went over to St. Paul to shoot some pictures. While I was driving down West 7th, it hit me. I absolutely have to take a picture of this amazing brewery. It happened to be in the middle of the day with an overcast sky which didn't make for a very exciting shot. So I knew I had to work my Photoshop magic to whip this picture into something dramatic. All it took was a little dose of Bob and Doug McKenzie to pull this off.

Anyway, this old Schmidt's Brewery had a similar architectural feel as the fictional Elsinore Brewery. In the movie, the brewery was always dark and ominous. And that's just what I needed to do to the photo I took. Make a daylight overcast picture look dark and ominous.

This West 7th "brew castle" is truly a thing of beauty. When I dug deeper into it's history, I discovered insightful information that could make this photo montage even more rich. By adding an old Schmidt's beer truck making it's way eastward, it tells a little story about our St. Paul neighborhoods history, eh.