The Bourbon Trail

As many of you know, there’s nothing I love more than a road trip. It’s another chance to roam the backroads with my camera, capturing a world we wish all still existed.

Rolling hills, beautiful scenery, no traffic, grilled cheese sandwiches and shakes, outgoing, friendly people and photo opps galore.

So when Photowalks sponsor Best Western Hotels called to suggest a road trip series in Indiana and Kentucky, I felt as if I’d won the lottery. What a tailor made gift!

Two of the Indiana episodes have launched, with 3 more to come in the fall. Meanwhile, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail series hit this week as a four-part series—yes, I got that much cool content.

Part 1: Don’t do the Bourbon Trail Without Watching This First

Part 2: Bardstown

Part 3: Elizabethtown

Part 4: Lawrenceburg

Now that you’ve hopefully seen one or two of the installments, I wanted to fill you in on some behind the scenes stories about the making of the shows, the trip and why you might want to take a visit.

First, know that I don’t drink. I have no ill feelings towards those do, and respect that they enjoy it. I just don’t like the taste of alcoholic drinks, nor the feeling of the buzz.

But I still loved every minute of being out on the trail, getting great shots, learning the history and meeting great people on the road.

A few thoughts:

I worked my phone trying to set up media tours of the distilleries. Call-backs were few, and it was like pulling teeth setting something up. I surmised that since bourbon sales have fallen, along with the entire spirits industry, the distillers were reluctant to have the media visit and ask questions about it.

Luckily, Angel’s Envy, a distiller based in Louisville, were the first to respond positively, and set me up with Angel Tate, a woman who serves as an ambassador for the brand, to give me a one-on-one tour of the facility.

I had the camera on a tripod, which I held as I followed Angel around. Then I set it up so I could face her and ask some questions with the machinery behind us. I used the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the .5 ultra-wide setting, to assure that we were both in the frame.

Then Conor O’Driscoll, the Master Distiller for the Heaven Hill brand agreed to meet me at the Bardstown facility, where we did a traditional sit down interview in a conference room.

I set the iPhone on a tripod behind me in traditional MMJ (multimedia journalist) style, with the camera set to Cinematic at 2x telephoto, to help blur the background and keep the focus on him.

Afterwards, we walked across the street to the facility, in front of a wall of endless barrels that was eight stories high.

“How do you climb up there?” to attend to the barrels, I asked.

“We have an elevator.”

Huge advancement from the days of backyard moonshine!

There is a beautiful corn field next to Heaven Hill that I couldn’t wait to photograph after the interview. First of all, it screamed “Bluegrass” country, and secondly, because I was in a small town, I figured the traffic would be light, and I could get some cool drone shots there without having to worry about too many passing cars.

All of this was true, and I used these shots in every installment of the series.

Speaking of small towns:

I began the shoot in Louisville, which I’ll you more about next week, but safe to say, this is the largest city in Kentucky, and while I didn’t experience big city traffic, there were multiple cars on the road, good sections of town and bad ones, parking meters, stop lights and all the other things you’d expect in a medium sized city.

Bardstown was the first of the small town visits, and it had won me over even before I got there by two phrases it uses.

A. It’s the Bourbon Capital of the World. Trademarked.

B. It’s the most charming small town in the USA.

Many people make the claim, none of it is provable, but for me, it was the most memorable of the visited towns, for reasons that had nothing to do with bourbon.

Yes, the shops had T-shirts and signs with funny bourbon puns, and many establishments for drinking, but I had two other highlights.

A guy named Everett “Jonesie” Jones has a horse and buggy on Main Street, and he gives people rides from his Around the Town Carriage shop. At the tourism office, (always my first stop) they have a fantastic video reel showing on the TV with an image of the horse galloping down Main Street.

I wanted that shot.

So I approached Jonesie for a ride, and he told me it would cost $100 and I needed a minimum of four people. That was too steep for my budget, so I declined, even if I couldn’t get that shot out of my head. I started walking out.

“I’ll do it for $50,” he said.

Done.

Jonesie and his horse are the stars of the Bardstown episode, and it was worth every penny. I didn’t have the time, nor the necessary gear to clamp a GoPro onto the side of the buggy—I had left the “Jaws” clamp at home, which was a mistake. But the shot I wanted—Main Street from the horse’s perspective, was easy enough to pick up from my iPhone.

I snapped a mic onto Jonesie for sound bites and we rode along. Besides the down home charm of the local character, my favorite was watching the horse make a U-turn in the middle of the street.

Back to the tourism office. Anyone who makes travel videos should always stop here first. They have postcards and images of all the best local shots, which are great for inspiration, and you can pick up great ideas from the people who work there.

For instance, when I sat down with the tourism director Stacey Phelps, she told me about some key places to visit, including the “My Old Kentucky Home” state park, a nostalgic old-timey place inspired by the Stephen Foster song. The songwriter wasn’t from Kentucky, but he had a cousin who lived in Bardstown, and that provoked him to write the now-controversial tune that’s sung at the start of every Kentucky Derby. (The lyrics beyond the opening verse couldn’t be sung aloud today.)

She called over to the park to set me up for an interview, and asked if I’d like someone there to sing “My Old Kentucky Home,” for me.

Would I? What a treat for the video. Thank you Kit!

Speaking of treats, there’s a little old-fashioned drug store on Main Street with a local pharmacist and Woolworth’s style luncheonette counter where I happily parked for the grilled cheese/vanilla shake segment.

“Thank you for reaching out and for your interest in working with our brand. We have passed along your contact information to our brand team for their review.”

That’s as far as I got with the media department at (no. 1 bourbon maker) Jim Beam to set up the tour and interview, so I went and bought myself a tour ticket anyway, and hoped no one would give me a hard time about filming during the 90-minute visit. I didn’t dream of asking for any interviews there, as I was sure they would say it had to be cleared by corporate.

I had an iPhone on a selfie stick and captured what turned out to be priceless B-roll for the episodes: the guide pouring sample drinks to the guests and splashing huge gobs of bourbon from a barrel, as well as bottles of bourbon traveling down the assembly line. Beyond that, this was a particularly well-done tour that explained the history of bourbon and how it’s made.

In Elizabethtown, I arrived in the evening, and took a walk around town. There I ran into two guys dressed in 1800s era garb, and I struck up a conversation.

They were re-enactors who performed in historical tours on Thursday evenings in “E-Town,” as locals call the place. This was more about the history of the place—where Abe Lincoln’s parents married a year and a half before he was born and General George Armstrong Custer was stationed for a while.

I hung around to pick up shots. My favorite was when the notorious anti-booze crusader Carrie Nation runs around with a bloody face and hatchet in her hand.

She was known for taking hatchets to saloons, even if it was mostly in Kansas. She agreed to pose for a selfie with me.

While Bardstown was the indeed the most charming, the most photogenic, for me, was Lawrenceburg, which I featured in the fourth episode.

The Main Street is classic Norman Rockwell, with buildings that date back to the early 1900s, with all the carvings and craftsmanship of the time. It’s also a few miles away from Wild Turkey, another major distiller, which had some of the prettiest grounds I’d encountered.

From the gift shop, you walk out onto a terrace and overlook Kentucky Bluegrass beauty. I could see an amazing old fashioned train bridge from here, and I set out to jump on the road and capture a closer shot.

But first, let me fill you in on a boo-boo.

Where was my shot of the terrace? Or the folks enjoying their drinks and having a ball out there? I captured them with my mind and memory, but I forgot to get stills or video of this.

Note to self: you can never come home with too many shots.

Anyway, I jumped in the car and drove over the bridge a few times, looking for a spot to pull over, so I could photograph.

From down there, I indeed got the shot I wanted, but how to get the car driving over the bridge? That’s the one I really wanted, but logistics were against me.

On a day when there are no cars on the road, or someone is around to help me, I could conceivably have the drone flying overhead, but this wasn’t going to happen today.

I could put the camera on a tripod and pick up the shot as the car drive by, if I could find the right spot for this.

This bridge didn’t have it. Obviously there was no place to pull over.

I had to settle for DIY: have the phone on the selfie stick and hold it out the window as I drove along.

This worked, although the shot was a little shaky.

In retrospect, I should have snapped the Insta360 X5 camera on the selfie stick, attached it to the car, on a long pole, and gotten the shot that way. This is how I captured my car driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Reason: the ultra, ultra wide reach of the Insta360 camera would capture it all. But I left the big pole at home, and the contraption I brought to attach cameras to the car wasn’t cutting it on the rental car.

Back to Lawrenceburg. I wanted to finish up with some intros and outros for the episode, and tried to stall to 8 p.m.

Reason: the sun was shining brightly, and I couldn’t stand in front of the buildings with the sun shining in my face. It’s not a flattering look. So I waited out the sun and eventually got there.

Huge thanks to Best Western for suggesting the trip in the first place, all the folks who lent a hand during the making of the episodes like Jonesie, Stacey from the Bardstown tourist office, the local judge from Elizabethtown (one of the re-enactors) and the tour guide from Jim Beam (her name escapes me right now) who poured all that bourbon for me. Such great B-roll!