There's Been This Octopus Sitting on my Desktop
Several weeks ago, I photographed octopuses for a post on my foodblog, www.2gourmaniacs.com. A couple of days afterwards, I was looking at images on cellphone's memory card, and I found a capture of an octopus in a colander that I made at the same time as the octopus shoot. And, yeah, I seriously manipulated the digital file in Photoshop; something I really don't do all that often. Anyway, I like this one: it has that painterly-cartoon quality which is pretty interesting, and I like the positive-negative of the holes in the colander and the suckers on the octopus's legs.
Wok the heck.
I was photographing my Chinese steel wok for a submission for my food blog (2gourmaniacs.com) to tastespotting.com. They're celebrating their fourth anniversary on line with entries entitled tastespotting100. I put my wok on the floor in my dining room and I had a single strobe bank overhead. The image I captured wasn't exactly what I had in mind; in fact, it wasn't the image I ultimately chose for my submission. But looking at this image with the catch light in the center of the wok started me
thinking about parabolic curves, college physics and long forgotten (and never to be remembered) mathematical formulae to describe what I was seeing in this capture. It looked very Asian, it smacked of a science that I use to know something about...
...or I could just have a very serious case of cabin fever here in snow bound Southampton.
Welcome to the North Pole...
...Well not really. But it sure looks like it in some parts of my immediate environment. I live on the South Fork of the East End of Long Island: it's a peninsula that sticks eastward out into the Atlantic Ocean. Now, hold your left hand out in front of you with your palm facing you. Look at the fore and middle fingers. I live about 3/4 of an inch on the middle finger from where your fingers form a V at your palm. Between your two fingers is the Peconic Bay, and below your middle finger is, of course the ocean.
I took the image below yesterday afternoon. I live right up the street from the Peconic Bay, this is what it looks like in January. Because it's tidal, and because we have a big tide here, there is alot of ice movement even when the salt water is frozen.
The other two images are from the ocean beach which is about a five minute drive from my house. Since it snowed earlier this week, it's been real cold with a lot of northerly wind. There hasn't been much thawing, and the wind has been sculpting the drifting snow. I've always loved bundling up and going out onto the beach and into the dunes for a couple hour's walk. Looking both at the ocean and especially the frozen bay, it's hard to imagine swimming in it in another five and-a-half months.
Another Foot of Snow
I'm house bound today, possibly for the immediate future. It snowed another foot or so last night, and with the high winds, there seems to be some significant snow drifts. Finally this afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds, and I went out to make a few captures. The little pond is on a golf course which borders my property, and it looked incredible in the weak afternoon light with just a little blue sky.
And this a piece of my gnarly wild cherry tree next to my driveway. I've photographed a lot of times in the past, especially with snow on it. I really like the sculptural quality of it and of this image.
Snow Trees
After the blizzard two weeks ago, everyone was a little edgy about the last night's weather prediction for 2-7 inches of snow. Before I went to bed, I stuck my head out my kitchen door and I quickly realized that this was going to be a mere dusting. When I awoke this morning, everything outside had a dusty white coating. I had a cup of tea as I looked out my kitchen slider. I watched the cat that we're cat-sitting checking out the new snow. So I picked up my little four thirds camera and screwed the tiny cine 25mm f1.5 onto it, and I went for a walk around my property. The bush and undergrowth is normally so thick that it is impossible to walk in many places. This is the only time of the year that I can easily access many of the nooks and crannies of my immediate environment. I made a bunch of captures this morning. I like this one because it's a good visual ambassador for what my immediate surroundings look like.
Okay, I took another look at the captures I made this morning, and I have to add this one. It's kind of like nature's way to saying, "don't give up hope in January, spring's just around the corner."
Snow Dune
As I mentioned in my last post, I've spent a lot of time wandering through coastal sand dunes in the winter, especially after snow storms. The storm we had a couple of days dumped a foot or so on Eastern Long Island. So, I made several photographs out in Napeaque, one of the few remaing, sparsely developed areas left between Southampton and Montauk. I especially like this one. If you want, you can see an entire portfolio of my early snowscapes from Plum Island, Ma. I've set them up as a separate tab under"Phatlandscapes" on my home page; just click on the Black & White Beachscapes link and follow the navigation buttons.
Post Blizzard Black and White Back Yard "Snowscape"
The sun peeked out around 11:00 this morning, and this is what my backyard looked like. The east coast got slammed with a lot of snow and a lot of wind. I use to spend an enormous amount of time photographing landscapes right after big snow storms, mainly on coastal New England beaches. The image below was made with an 8x10 view camera on a tripod right off my back deck. I can't wait to shovel out my vehicle and head for the beach.
Coolest Building in NYC
This the IAC Building on the the corner of 11th Avenue and 18th Street in Manhattan. Frank Gehry was the architect: if you know his work, from just looking at the building, it's pretty obvious he designed it. It's my favorite contemporary building in New York. Every time I go the Chelsea Market to purvey food stuff I always find free parking on 11th Avenue (there goes my "go-to" parking secret.) And I always make a couple of captures of the IAC building as I walk by. Yesterday, the afternoon light was dull, the sky was overcast, and there was a serious threat of snow in the air. Just right to photograph Gehry's building.
New Kitchen Art
It's been a while since I framed a new piece for my own home. I had a bunch of flowering chives sitting on my island counter in my kitchen for two weeks. Everyday I kept saying I've got to take a picture of them. Finally the other day, I put them on a piece of seamless and photographed them. Yesterday, I made a small print of the capture, and I immediately made a larger 16x20 print. I went into the kitchen and took one of the cherry frames which had a horizontal B&W landscape in it, brought it to my framing table and swapped my still life print for it. It works really well in my kitchen. (Actually, I like the print quality so much better than what you're looking at on your monitor: the background color is a deeper, richer color which makes the greens of the chives jump off the paper.)
Now if someone had told me twenty-five years ago that I'd be photographing plant still lives, framing them and hanging them on my wall, I'd would told them that they were nuts. Just goes to show you, you can teach an old dog new tricks.
What's Up in Mid-Town?
On our way across 53rd Street in Manhattan last Monday, my son, Alex, was looking down Madison Ave. in the mid afternoon glare, and he commented on how much glass was used in most of all the buildings in Manhattan; then he asked me what did New York buildings like like when I was a kid. I thought that was a good question. I replied that in the fifties, there was the Chrysler Building, the Woolworth building and the Empire State building which were all "skyscrapers". I continued that there probably a handful more that were over fifty stories, but for the most part the buildings in Manhattan back then were under thirty to thirty-five stories. He and I looked around and then gazed skywards. So much had changed in New York since I lived there full time in the early 90's, let alone since I was a kid.
Alex and I went to the Museum of Modern Art. In the photography galleries, there was an early Robert Frank black and white image of the New York skyline circa 1954. I pointed it out to Alex and reminded him of our earlier conversation. We hung out at MOMA for several hours, and then left. Right outside the door, the light was fading, and the sunlight just caught the top of one of the buildings. I had my four-thirds digital camera in my pocket, and I quickly made this capture. I really like the juxtaposition of the old brick facade on the right with all the glass and steel everywhere else.
