Category Archives: Greenmarket in the Studio

Feb 23 0 comments
Food Photography, Greenmarket in the Studio, Personal Photography, Slow Food, Union Square

Kitchen Decor Prints Now Available

Bunch of Fresh Beets

Fresh Beets © 2012 D.A.Wagner

For years I’ve entertained the idea of pursuing a line of kitchen art. I even toyed with a shop on Etsy for a while called Kitchen Graphics. Now, after shooting thousands of personal photos of fruits and veggies, both in the studio and out, these berries,hot peppers, sprouts and assorted salad fixin’s are available online as museum wrapped prints from Somerset House Fine Art in their Kitchen Decor category. I have them in my kitchen. Why aren’t they in yours?

I (very loosely) use Richard Avedon’s series of Nos as a guideline to capturing my produce - “No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narratives.” This allowed Avedon to get to the raw unadorned beauty of his subjects. I apply this approach to appliances and products as well. (Is there no shame?)

Well, it had to happen sometime.

Jan 06 0 comments
Business, Food, Food Photography, Greenmarket in the Studio, Marketing, Personal Photography, Union Square, Vegetables

Well, it’s about time.

Bok Choi

Dancing Baby Bok Choy

After 5 years of shooting greenmarket produce in the studio, at Union Square, Italy and other various places, I needed to do something with all those digital images other than use them to grace friend’s and family’s homes and fill numerous hard drives to capacity. So, with a little trepidation I started an Etsy store to sell digital prints, not as expensive art, but as affordable graphics to frame and hang in the kitchen, which is where I think they belong.

And although I’ve been focused on business these past few months, I’m now anxiously waiting for spring to return so I can continue this project.

It’s just way too cold to go out now.

Dec 05 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Food Photography, Greenmarket in the Studio, Lighting, Portfolio, Vegetables

Splash!

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to test out a couple of Broncolor’s Scoro A4S packs. These pricey, high-speed,computer controlled flash units (about $28,000US for two packs and two heads) are unbeatable when it comes to short flash duration. It froze everything we shot as crisp and sharp as one could expect and, no, I’m not going to make any freezy jokes. As always, turning many of the images sideways and upside down made for the most interesting splash results. And I couldn’t resist throwing in (quite literally) some of the toy figures sitting around from recent jobs.

Lemons dropping into tank of water

Lemon Drops

It was a fun day in the studio. Thanks to Steve Warren, my assistant, for the extra Canon 5D to shoot the behind the scenes video. And special thanks to Tim Hawkings at Cheeky Little Monkey for making it all happen.

D.A.

Jan 07 1 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Greenmarket in the Studio, Organic, Personal Photography, Photography, Portfolio, Slow Food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio #10

Onion Mirror

A vision evolving.

While in the process of this particular exploration I’m finding there is a lot of failure. Not failure in the sense of exposure or composition, but failure in concept and vision. And, there’s certainly no value in putting images into my book simply because I did it. Right now, I’m developing the concept of a dark series. The vision is evolving and this shot is more like what I need for the new series; it definitely feels like a sister image to the Steak photo that started it all, back in October.

Now the challenge is to find a thread that connects my next dark image to the first two.

Dec 31 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Greenmarket in the Studio, Organic, Photography, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio #9 (onward to 2010)

2:02PM, 12/28/2009 - Celebration Onion 2010

I bought a dozen onions and brought them into the studio for the usual shoot ‘em and eat ‘em routine. One by one I placed them on set and, one by one, little personalities revealed themselves. These are the year-end onions, the ones that aren’t in the best of shape, but are still worth eating. No longer are the stems green and bright, they’re brown and look more like the ones in the supermarket than the greenmarket, shipped from far away and weeks or months old.

Am I deluded? Onions? Little personalities? Four years of this and still thinking there are little people in there somewhere. Should I make a metaphorical reference to the year passing as layers of an onion and go cliché on everyone?

Too late.

I pay homage to 2009 with this celebration onion. I will cut into it with sharp abandon, and with tears in my eyes, throw the thin slices into a hot frying pan drizzled with sesame oil, sizzling and transforming itself into something sweet, fragrant and appealing. Oh, how 2010 should be so transformed from 2009.

Happy New Year.

Nov 24 0 comments
Brain, Food, Greenmarket in the Studio, NYC, Organic, Personal Photography, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio #8

Anthropomorphic Celeriac

Anthropomorphic Celeriac

I don’t do anything, really. I don’t. I go to the market. I see something interesting. I shoot it. I eat it (this week it was in my salads). I rarely see the “anthro” part until after I’ve finished shooting and have time to review the captures. It’s the limbo of the background isolating the food. We get to study it with no distractions and that’s when it takes on a life of its own.

So why do we see it this way? I suspect that this is just the human brain still relating to the world it lives in the same way it did 50,000 years ago. As early modern humans evolved and needed to explain the world around them and, while in the process of inventing reasons for why things happen like day and night or lightning, did they also look at their relationship with food and give human attributes to those things that abstractly had hair, eyes, hands, etc., as they did with clouds? I think so (but I haven’t done my research here). Somehow this must be embedded in our genes just like smiling.

Nov 11 0 comments
Food, Greenmarket in the Studio, NYC, Organic, Personal Photography, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio #7

11/6/2009 Brussels Sprouts - Belting out a tune

11/6/2009 Brussels Sprouts - Belting out a tune (probably a show tune at that)

Ethel Merman screen capture from YouTube

Ethel Merman screen capture from YouTube

Standing over three feet tall and looking like Ethel Merman belting out, “No Business Like Show Business,” this stalk had over 70 Sprouts clinging to it. And the leaves at the top? Well that’s just a giant Brussels Sprout, kinda like a head of cabbage, really. And those leaves, they’re about 14 inches across. Huge.

I know a lot of folks hate these, and I really don’t understand why. Sprouts sliced in half and sautéed in olive oil for a few minutes and dusted with pepper and a twist of freshly ground sea salt makes this a wonderful side dish with pasta.

Brussels Sprouts Spine

Brussels Sprouts Spine

As a side note, PJ, my studio mate, came in and suggested this would look like a spine if I cut the head off, which I did and, sure enough, it looked like a curved scoliosis spine. But after spending all that time with this stalk on set, I had grown used to that big head of leaves and I couldn’t help but feel it looked a little anemic without it.

BTW, trying to lay out multiple images in WordPress is challenging. There’s not a lot of room for design.

Oct 31 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Food, Greenmarket in the Studio, Organic, Portfolio, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio #6

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

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 )

Oct 23 0 comments
Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Greenmarket in the Studio, NYC, Organic, Portfolio, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Greenmarket in the Studio #5

Sweeping Leaves, Mustard Greens

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.

Oct 03 1 comments
Food, Greenmarket in the Studio, NYC, Organic, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Shooting from the Hip #20

Union Square Market 10/02/2009, 10:14AM - Accidental Still Life #1

Shoppers love to touch food. They touch for freshness and to smell and to taste. They touch for the sake of feeling something that is as essential as the air we breathe. They are the unseen human presence in my market images and constantly changing the landscapes I capture here.

What happened in front of my lens today is a real lesson in serendipity. Just a few seconds later, this tableaux was gone.

Forever.

For all the thousands of photographs I have taken here since I started shooting in the Union Square market (a quick count shows about 2300 since June), this image is a gift.