Vitriol.

(L) Saf-T-Pop sucker. (R) Sucker punch. © Ryan Schierling

Or, what does vengeance taste like? Is it sweet, like poets, clichéd sportswriters and mystery authors would attest? Does it taste like tears and blood? Who put the sucker in sucker punch? Have you ever been sucker punched? So many questions.

I've spent a little bit of spare time over the last couple of weeks writing things down on a legal pad, mostly words that pop into my head during the day or concepts that are just vague enough to push me to want to see them realized in some fashion or another. That's one of my favorite things about being a photographer – sometimes you just take photographs, other times you make them. And that process, the exploration of concepts from nothing more than a gut feeling in the morning when you wake up, to fully-realized images, is always an incredible learning experience. 

This pair of photos came from, among other things, three "V" words – vitriol, vengeance and violent. 

(Oh, and really, I swear, I am in the holiday spirit. Honest.)