Double, double toil and trouble; Fire, burn and caldron bubble.

A Chinese lady came up to me in the Union Square market last Monday morning, pointed down and asked, in broken English, how much? I don’t have a clue what gave her the idea I worked at this particular kiosk at the market, but it gave me pause to look down at a group of pumpkins with long, wild stems, as if they had been torn off the vine instead of cut. No prices.

Now, I wanted to know, too. How much? They were two bucks apiece. I took the three most interesting stems (almost more important than the pumpkins themselves) and bagged them so the stems didn’t break on the way back to the studio. Then, I stopped and told the lady how much they were, but she looked at me in a funny kind of way – I don’t think she understood me or, maybe she’d already gotten over her pumpkin jones.

Vicki says these pumpkins remind her of Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth.

A dark Cave. In the middle, a Caldron boiling. Thunder. (Shakespeare)

Happy Halloween. (Not Shakespeare )

9:08AM, 10/14/2009 End of Season Corn

There have been too many attempts shooting corn with nothing to show. Husks are just not an easy subject. But someone pulled the husk back on this one, revealing the corn and leaving it on top of the heap in the early morning light, which moved across the kernels in a hurry.  It took less than 60 seconds before the light moved off that perfect spot. Three shots. That’s all I had time for.

Then, the light was gone.

9:04AM 10/21/09, French Breakfast Radishes in Union Square Market

Some things look completely different from different angles. You wouldn’t expect that from French breakfast radishes since they’re more or less symmetrical and, unless you’re a radish, can tell the difference. So, here are two shots, taken less than two minutes apart. Diffused sunlight through the vendor’s white tent fabric and shot from this camera angle (Originally shot from the side and flipped 90º), this capture feels soft and nurturing.

This shot (below), however, I captured from the top of the stack (I flipped this upside down – clever me) and the radishes cast a shadow on themselves. A totally different feeling: dramatic, almost threatening in a scary movie kind of way. Alien. I like the top shot for the one radish rising about the crowd. I like the bottom shot for the drama of the tangled white roots rising against the receding shadow and gray pavement of Union Square.

9:06AM, 10/21/2009 French Breakfast Radishes Alternate in Union Square Market

Why so different? It must be the light. Or maybe it’s the camera angle. Then again, if I’d not turned them, would they have been as visually compelling? Maybe not, as I passed these over at least three times in my editing before taking on a different perspective. Simply shooting from the hip is not always enough to get to an interesting shot.

Sometimes you have to stand on your head (metaphorically) to make things interesting.

Sweeping Leaves, Mustard Greens

Now that I’m moving onto this dark thing…

Black backgrounds are so completely different to shoot on. The black just wraps itself around the subject matter. Where white is wholesome, clean, crisp and elegant, and never loses my subject, black is erotic, deep, surrounding and foreboding (but not in a creepy kind of way), and can swallow my subject like a black hole.

Recently a friend asked if I was tired of shooting vegetables and the market. No, not really. It’s challenging to find the interesting and unusual in the familiar; it’s not always easy. And what I find fascinating is, there is a front and a back to these studio subjects that I am sure is not intentional, but purely by coincidence. The most involvement I have on set is getting the produce to stand up. With very few exceptions (like Green Market in the Studio #4), I don’t style. If a stem is broken or a leaf torn or eaten by a passing insect, I don’t retouch it. It’s about real food, just as I bought it. The only difference is, I shoot it before I eat it.

If you like arugula, broccoli rabe and bitter greens, you’ll love this very simple recipe for wilted mustard greens.

Wilted Mustard Greens

1 bunch of mustard greens (about a pound or a 2″ circumference of stalks when tied with a rubber band – that’s about what I had)

2 cloves of garlic pushed through a press

3 or 4 tablespoons of dashi (at about 1:5 dashi to water) or vegetable or chicken broth

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 tablespoon of sesame oil

Okay, here’s how: Tear off the leaves from the stems and thick veins (and discard those guys)  and wash and dry them as you would lettuce. In a large frying pan or sauté pan heat up the olive oil on a medium/high heat and add the garlic and brown (about a minute). Add the dashi or broth to the pan and add the greens, tossing gently for about a minute or so (not much more, or you find it’s cooked down to nothing). Remove from the burner, drizzle on the sesame oil, add salt and pepper to taste and toss. Put it on a nice plate and eat. Serves 2 to 4, depending upon how much you love your greens.

And don’t forget to share.

9:36AM, 10/21/2009 - Fish On Ice

It’s a departure from the usual images that get posted here.

I don’t always find the ice cases at the fish monger in Union Square full with fish, as they usually are the first to sell out. In fact, this is only the second time. The big line there didn’t give me much opportunity for thinking, so I just kept shooting without looking, until someone asked me if I was on line. I think it was their way of telling me I was holding things up. Fair enough.

It looks like a detail from an old master painting. I’m thinking Jean Frederic Bazille’s, Still Life with Fish, which, again, may be pushing the old master thing too far. But, that stripe of light across the fish just seems so surreal.

Grilled Steak on Stakes

Addendum – October 27, 2009 – Calumet Photo selected this image as a Photo of the Week. Nice start.

I built a patio over the summer with Vicki. With the help of Tim and a neighborhood kid, we moved the six thousand pounds of sand, gravel and pavers by hand that had been dropped on the front sidewalk by the delivery guys, to the garden about 50 feet away. Over the next 4 weeks the two of us tilled, excavated, leveled, filled the hole with gravel and sand and laid stones until we had a lovely, small patio in the middle of our (Vicki’s really) garden. No war stories. No injuries. A perfect execution by a couple of DIYers.

What’s this got to do with the photo?

It’s the nails, or stakes as they call ‘em, that were used to hold the stones in place. They’re huge. They’re more than twelve inches long and a quarter inch thick with a rough, galvanized finish on them and every time I drove a stake into the ground, they grew more beautiful and interesting. When we completed the project, I went out and purchased a dozen of the stakes and they sat in a red bucket on the floor of the hallway for weeks until the idea came: steaks on stakes. I yanked apart the palettes the pavers came on and let the large, four inch, wood blocks sit in the weather for a month. Now I had the stakes, the wood for a fire and an idea. The idea progressed along, during the move and while making phone calls and sending mailers, until it came to fruition last Thursday, when it all ended up in front of the camera. It came together quickly; it’s what happens when my neurotransmitters slam those molecules into their receptor sites and then I spend a few nights sleeping on the idea. My axons and dendrites get all excited, and then with a steak from Pedro the butcher (with the patience of a saint) at Los Paisanos around the corner, it all began.

Wood. Stakes. Steak. Fire. Boy, that was fun.

I have so much of my new work on white, it’s time to start a black series. This is number one.

8:51AM, 10/14/2009 Assorted Hot Peppers

There’s been a debate about this image. Should I have included the funky tomatoes tablecloth under these boxes hot peppers, or cropped it out. I have a couple of shots this week with tablecloths making their debut in my market photos (at least that I know of, I should go and look). The other one, oddly enough, has an assorted hot peppers tablecloth under three bunches of rainbow chard. A lovely, colorful image taken just a moment later, but chard has had it’s fair share of blog time and I didn’t want to post another chard photo. So I’m posting just a little detail for fun.

8:50AM, 10/14/2009 - Rainbow Chard #3 (detail)

Funky tablecloths. Is it me, or is this is a trend?

Either way, I like them.

8:47AM, 10/10/2009 - Vicki Cycling on the Minuteman Bikeway

It rained all the way up to Boston with a substantial amount of bumper to bumper traffic, leaving little pleasure on this drive. Seven hours for a three and a half hour trip. When we got up on Saturday morning, it was still raining, but a warm 60 degrees, so we took a chance and won. We have a nearly perfect record of cycling between the raindrops, in direct contrast to our rain soaked driving record.

The rain stopped as we took the bikes off the car and only a beautiful, sun streaked fog remained. We headed out for the Minuteman Bikeway, a rail trail that passes outside the back door of the Lexington, Aloft Hotel where we were staying. Nothing is as exhilarating as riding an empty rail trail or local county back roads, and this was one of those mornings. In the short 20 mile round trip to the City limits (almost to Harvard Square, but at that point the trees were gone and we were basically riding next to strip malls) we passed less than a dozen people. Nice.

Alewife Roadway Marker on Minuteman Bikeway, Boston

Vicki took a spill at the Alewife road marker (Alewife, not a brewer’s wife, but a fish – see fish in detail photo of marker), throwing her off the bike and leaving her bruised and shaken. But she got right back on her bike and forgot about it until the bruises started to swell as the day progressed. Sunday was close to 60 again and perfectly sunny, but instead of a ride, we gave in to the hotel’s small salt water pool, which was warm, clean and empty of guests. It is one of the best urban (cheap) hotel pools I’ve been in.

What happened to the markets? Amazingly, Boston has changed, and the markets as I remembered them are different. Next trip, I do some research first. In light of my disappointment, we did the tourist thing: Paul Revere’s house (interesting), the Old North Church (not so interesting, except this is where the American revolution literally started), and the Institute of Contemporary Art (really worth visiting – great building, great exhibits). This trip was more about relaxing, eating and cycling, than taking photos.

Not a bad thing.

10:15AM, 10/07/2009 - Plums at Union Square Market

It’s been a long week and I’m off to Boston to do some cycling and check out the markets. There are some plans in my back pocket for new portfolio pieces and those should be under way next week some time. I’m thinking about moving on to a black portfolio, the white book is pretty well rounded out and it seems a good compliment. Anyway, fire looks good against black. Look for the test results, coming soon to a blog near you.

And, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. That should make his day. It sure made mine.

Now, if only he can get a decent healthcare bill through congress so freelancers aren’t penalized by the system any longer.

10:28AM, 10/07/2009 - Edible Nasturtium Flowers at Union Square Market

When fresh flowers, or any fresh fruit or vegetables for that matter, are placed into a clear plastic container or bag, they continue to breathe. They exhale carbon dioxide, creating condensation, vapor and water, becoming the artist’s thumb, smearing and distorting the under painting.

This isn’t the first time I’ve photographed edible flowers in boxes; in fact, I may have a few hundred shots like these from a half dozen attempts. This is however, the first time the contents have been right. The colors were right. The condensation was right. The light was right.

If at first you don’t succeed, blah, blah blah.