Category Archives: Photography

Dec 28 2 comments
Cats, Personal Photography, Photography

I’ve got. A Cat.

Eye to Eye with Blue

Eye to Eye with Blue

A little departure from my usual musings…

Every once an a while, when the sun is out and the time is right, cats go into the day crazies (there is a similar variation known as night crazies). They skitter, they leap, they walk sideways, turn somersaults, and levitate and transport themselves, in cartoon fashion, across various vertical and horizontal surfaces.

And then they plotz.

Cats, as I understand it, have no sense of self. But after an event of wild abandon, they head off to wherever the sun is streaming and lay in the glow of light and strike a pose,

or two,

or three,

or forty – in movie star fashion, in some kind of repose as if to expect the camera to capture them in their glorious, sultry elegance.

This time I obliged.

And, within seconds, she fell asleep in heat of the sun.

Sleeping Blue

Dec 28 2 comments
Cats, Personal Photography, Photography

I've got. A Cat.

Eye to Eye with Blue

Eye to Eye with Blue

A little departure from my usual musings…

Every once an a while, when the sun is out and the time is right, cats go into the day crazies (there is a similar variation known as night crazies). They skitter, they leap, they walk sideways, turn somersaults, and levitate and transport themselves, in cartoon fashion, across various vertical and horizontal surfaces.

And then they plotz.

Cats, as I understand it, have no sense of self. But after an event of wild abandon, they head off to wherever the sun is streaming and lay in the glow of light and strike a pose,

or two,

or three,

or forty – in movie star fashion, in some kind of repose as if to expect the camera to capture them in their glorious, sultry elegance.

This time I obliged.

And, within seconds, she fell asleep in heat of the sun.

Sleeping Blue

Dec 22 0 comments
Advertising, Business, Commercial Photography, Personal Photography, Photography

Which Way Now?

12:43PM, 12/21/2009 East 3rd Street between 1st and A

Like the snowstorm of last Saturday, the year is slipping away. 2009 looked good for a moment (here and there) until, like the snow, it turned into a syrupy slush. So,what’s the lesson learned this year?

It was all good.

If we learn from our mistakes, we grow and move on. We don’t whine and complain about the failures; we embrace and discuss the solutions. Why did I relaunch my studio business in the middle of all this? It was time to come back. I make a lousy employee.

2009? No, not a great year by any standards. But a good year nonetheless.

2010? Well, it goes without saying (although I am, aren’t I), it’s going to be a better year by a long shot.

Dec 15 1 comments
NYC, Organic, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Shooting from the Hip #31

10:12AM, 12/14/2009 Rows of Romanesco Broccoli

10:12AM, 12/14/2009 Rows of Romanesco Broccoli

Swaying like the tops of pine trees blowing in the wind, these end of season romanesco broccoli are actually an edible flower in the Brassica oleracea family (cauliflower, not broccoli!).

Now that the clocks have been set back, I don’t have to get up quite as early to capture the more dramatic early morning light (It’s not like I’ve ever actually gotten up early to shoot these). People keep asking me if I light or arrange the Union Square, Shooting from the Hip photos. The answer is always no. The light and styling of the subject just happen to be that way when I capture the image.

P.S. All my friends have commented that, “Hey, they look like Xmas trees.” Silly me.

Dec 08 1 comments
Bookbinding, Commercial Photography, Commercial Photography, Craftsmen, Marketing, Portfolio

Moab Paper Features D.A.Wagner Hand-Made Portfolio Case

Detail D.A.Wagner Portfolio

Detail - Slipcase and Top of Book. Click on photo above to see the whole story.

The folks over at Legion Paper, the parent company of Moab, took a liking to my hand-made portfolio and featured it on the Moab Facebook Fan page. Made with Ballistics cloth, Rayon and Japanese hand made fabric, the portfolio pages were printed on Moab Lasal Matte 235.

And, as nice as the detail photos look, the inside of the book is much prettier, it has my photography in it.

Dec 04 0 comments
NYC, Organic, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Shooting from the Hip #30

2:15PM, 11/23/2009 - Watermelon Radish at Union Square Market

2:15PM, 11/23/2009 - Watermelon Radish at Union Square Market

Watermelon radish is a beautiful root vegetable with a magenta to white center that looks like it was made on a spin art machine. Although its nickname is the bleeding heart radish there’s no heartburn here. This radish is sweet, not spicy or bitter, which is a really good reason to try it if you don’t normally like radishes in salads. The watermelon radish is different and worth a try.

Here’s a link to New York Magazine for a Mâche-and-Watermelon-Radish Salad recipe by Akhtar Nawab, formerly of Tom Colicchio’s Craftbar and his own restaurant, Eletteria.

Simply wonderful.

Nov 28 0 comments
Advertising, Commercial Photography, parody

A replacement for high cost of original, creative thinking

Fifty years ago,  Calvin Communications, a leading corporate industrial film producer of the 40s and 50s, created this short film as a spoof of their own corporate work. Using their regular actors, Calvin (whose clients included DuPont, Goodyear, General Mills and Westinghouse), would regularly produce parodies that were shown at company get togethers.

This film from the Prelinger Archives opens with a commentary that says, it is a groundbreaking replacement for the high cost of original, creative thinking. Some things never change.

(References here were from Wikipedia – yeah,yeah, I know, not the best references! – and Steve Hoffman Music Forums)

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 17 0 comments
Food, Fruit, NYC, Organic, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square

Shooting from the (Rose) Hip(s) #29

10:28AM, 11/4/2009 Rose Hips Heart

10:28AM, 11/4/2009 Rose Hips Heart

Occasionally, I’ll mosey over to Wikipedia to gather a little information about something I’ve recently shot and then grab a couple of key words and search for more reliable information. Today’s results were more amusing than usual.

Hmmmm. Fact or Wikipedia fiction? “Rose hips have recently become popular as a healthy treat for pet chinchillas. Chinchillas are unable to manufacture their own Vitamin C, but lack the proper internal organs to process many vitamin-C rich foods. Rose hips provide a sugarless, safe way to increase the Vitamin C intake of chinchillas and guinea pigs.” Now, is that so the chinchillas will make nice shiny fur coats?

Continuing on, “Rose hips are also fed to horses. The dried and powdered form can be fed at a maximum of 1 tablespoon per day to improve coat condition and new hoof growth.” Okay, maybe that’s plausible, but why the dosage? So we do it right?

And then it goes on, “The fine hairs found inside rose hips are used as itching powder” Itching powder? What? No reference to whoopee cushions? And finally, this: “Rose hips can be used to make Palinka, a traditional Hungarian alcoholic beverage.” That’s a traditional fruit brandy produced in Transylvania (no references or links to either, True Blood, The Vampire Dairies or Twilight). Nice, but I looked that up in Wikipedia and there’s no mention of rose hips.

I didn’t search elsewhere today, this was too much fun. Gotta love Wikipedia.

Anyway, we’re deep into fall and this capture was a pleasant surprise. There’s something about that long, bare green stem in the foreground that makes this work. Maybe because it looks like that big vein that real hearts have.

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.