Category Archives: Union Square

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 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 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.

Nov 06 0 comments
Food, Organic, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Shooting from the Hip # 28

8:43AM, 10/28/2009 Radishes and Carrots

8:43AM, 10/28/2009 Radishes and Carrots

Another shot from last week’s rainy Wednesday.

Nov 05 0 comments
NYC, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Shooting from the Hip # 27(Rainy Days)

8:46AM, 10/28/2009 - Accidental Tableaux #2

8:46AM, 10/28/2009 - Accidental Tableaux #2

Last Wednesday it drizzled pretty much all day. A little rain isn’t going to keep me from pulling out my trusty G10 and shooting. Rain brings out deeper tones and saturated colors while giving a specularity to things we normally associate as being visually flat, especially root vegetables which are covered with a dusting of earth. I tried Googling it but I can’t find a scientific explanation for why this is. I know it has something to do with the optical nature of H2O. It must be when light passes through or is reflected off a thin film of water. Let me know if you have the answer.

And, that carrot on the ground? It was out of frame until a group of people passed by and someone kicked it into my field of view. Without that carrot, it’s a different shot.

Nov 03 0 comments
Personal Photography, Portfolio, Shooting from the Hip, Union Square

Freelance Portfolio Magazine Launches

Inside spread of D.A.Wagner's work from Freelance Portfolio Magazine

Inside spread of D.A.Wagner's work from Freelance Portfolio Magazine

Yesterday afternoon, Greg Welch called me regarding a submission I made to his, about-to-be-launched, Freelance Portfolio Magazine, scheduled for December. He’d taken a look at the blog and felt there was something compelling about my comparisons of Mandelbrot’s fractals, NASA satellite imagery and my photographs of food. It struck a chord and we chatted a while about my past history with computers and special effects and, instead of my original submission, he asked to publish the images from the post. He mentioned that the launch was pushed up and he expected to put it up by today.

And he did. With my images included. I love the way it looks and Greg got me to thinking again about those visual relationships that somehow connect the very small to the very large. I spent most of my morning cruising through CERN, Fermilab and NASA, looking for more ways that that happens. Look for them in upcoming posts.

Thanks, Greg.

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 29 0 comments
NYC, Personal Photography, Shooting from the Hip, Slow Food, slow food, Union Square, Vegetables

Shooting from the Hip # 26

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

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.