Category Archives: Vegetables

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.

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 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.

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.