12/14/09, 10:14AM Union Square Market - Where's the Purple Broccoli?

Where’s the purple broccoli?

I make my marketing message as clear as possible because I want the attention of the smart, little shops with brilliant creatives who fly under the radar, as well as the equally brilliant big boys. I’d certainly lose the interest of those I wish to work for if I sent out a constant stream of mixed messages. Not an easy task in a competitive industry as this, but probably one of the most important lessons we can learn and a word we know all to well. Focus.

If you want to find your audience, keep your message consistent, your work focused and your vision clear.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Another shot from last week’s rainy Wednesday.

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.

3:04PM, 09/25/2009 - 3 Beans in a Bowl

Finally, my first Union Square produce photo shot in the new studio.

I was waiting to get settled before capturing these images of wax beans (crappy name, but that’s what the sign said), also known as yellow, heirloom or golden beans, and almost missed my chance. Except for the folks with the big ORGANIC banner, none of the vendors had them. Wax beans (yellow green beans as far as I’m concerned) have these really gorgeous yellow to green transitions at the tips. When I started to play around with the curved ones it looked like steam coming up from the bowl, so I went with it.  Maybe this will make it to the portfolio.

Who said legumes can’t be sexy…?

10:51AM 9/05/09 - Fennel in wooden box at Union Square Market, NYC

In a couple of days it’s back to business, having wrapped and packed and loaded up and moved and unloaded and unwrapped and unpacked and then moved some stuff home after moving it to the new studio ’cause it didn’t fit (<looks like a run on sentence, doesn’t it?).

The September email promotions and postcards are out and now it’s time to pick up the phone and make those calls for a little face time with Buyers. I’ve spent way too much time building this new portfolio and contemplating this move. So, it’s on to the phone calls, picking up an unlimited MetroCard, buzzing through the nearly always useless security checkpoints and showing up for my appointments. Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” I wonder what the other twenty percent is.

Just to make things interesting, after I wrote this entry, notcot.org, posted my scissor birds photo and it went viral with 800 hits so far in just 24 hours. Absolutely amazing! Three months of blogging and marketing finally start to pay off! So, the other twenty percent must have something to do with perserverence. And I thought it might be perspiration. Who knew?

Savoy Cabbage at Union Square Market

NASA Satellite Photo of Anchorage Alaska, February 16, 2003

What do Savoy Cabbage from Union Square Market and a Satellite image from NASA have in common? Benoît Mandelbrot’s mathmatical Fractals.

In the mid 1980s Jonathan Herbert and I were creative partners, owning one of the first IBM XT computers and diving head-first into pretty uncharted territory for photography at the time: computer generated graphics combined with traditional photography. He was the artist and I, the photographer. Although we were far, far from creating anything remotely close to what Mandelbrot had achieved working with the Cray Super Computers of the day (the Cray-2 and X-MP), we aspired to create something, someday that resembled the pages of our hero’s book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, which, believe it or not, is still in print after 26 years. And, I keep discovering fractals in so much of what I shoot.

A detail of my Romanesco Broccoli from Union Square market- Also called Fractal Broccoli

So, where are we now? Jonathan Herbert has taken to fine art and I, to still life, back to the basics for both of us. The computer still figures in to our lives pretty heavily, but our desires are different.

And I have to admit after 25 years of computers, I can’t imagine living without my iPhone, MacPro tower, my MacBook Pro or my digital watch for that matter. By the way, the 2008 MacPro Tower runs about a thousand times faster than those old Crays.

I would never go back. Now, to sit down to Vicki’s French chicken and cabbage dinner…

Detail of Chard in Wooden Box

Union Square Market, NYC – 9/5/2009, 10:50 AM

I’ve most likely walked through the Union Square market a thousand times, yet it wasn’t until I started shooting for this blog that I discovered a market rarely seen. It’s the vendors who, unknowingly, set up my photos, so it’s a wonder that anything works at all. In the end, it is a market filled with the commonplace caught in the random and uncommon act of being in the right place and right light at the right time when I come along. Truly, there is a familiarity to so much of what I see, it’s not unusual to wonder if anything I do today can be any different from yesterday or the day before.

There is an elegance to the much of the stationary world that goes unseen. It is hidden away, out of view simply because it is surrounded by comings and goings, tables and pavement, laughter and silence.

I’m humbled by what the market gives me for my patience. I sure hope she never gets bored with me.