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.

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.

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.

9:04AM 10/21/09, French Breakfast Radishes in Union Square Market

Some things look completely different from different angles. You wouldn’t expect that from French breakfast radishes since they’re more or less symmetrical and, unless you’re a radish, can tell the difference. So, here are two shots, taken less than two minutes apart. Diffused sunlight through the vendor’s white tent fabric and shot from this camera angle (Originally shot from the side and flipped 90º), this capture feels soft and nurturing.

This shot (below), however, I captured from the top of the stack (I flipped this upside down – clever me) and the radishes cast a shadow on themselves. A totally different feeling: dramatic, almost threatening in a scary movie kind of way. Alien. I like the top shot for the one radish rising about the crowd. I like the bottom shot for the drama of the tangled white roots rising against the receding shadow and gray pavement of Union Square.

9:06AM, 10/21/2009 French Breakfast Radishes Alternate in Union Square Market

Why so different? It must be the light. Or maybe it’s the camera angle. Then again, if I’d not turned them, would they have been as visually compelling? Maybe not, as I passed these over at least three times in my editing before taking on a different perspective. Simply shooting from the hip is not always enough to get to an interesting shot.

Sometimes you have to stand on your head (metaphorically) to make things interesting.

Grilled Steak on Stakes

Addendum – October 27, 2009 – Calumet Photo selected this image as a Photo of the Week. Nice start.

I built a patio over the summer with Vicki. With the help of Tim and a neighborhood kid, we moved the six thousand pounds of sand, gravel and pavers by hand that had been dropped on the front sidewalk by the delivery guys, to the garden about 50 feet away. Over the next 4 weeks the two of us tilled, excavated, leveled, filled the hole with gravel and sand and laid stones until we had a lovely, small patio in the middle of our (Vicki’s really) garden. No war stories. No injuries. A perfect execution by a couple of DIYers.

What’s this got to do with the photo?

It’s the nails, or stakes as they call ‘em, that were used to hold the stones in place. They’re huge. They’re more than twelve inches long and a quarter inch thick with a rough, galvanized finish on them and every time I drove a stake into the ground, they grew more beautiful and interesting. When we completed the project, I went out and purchased a dozen of the stakes and they sat in a red bucket on the floor of the hallway for weeks until the idea came: steaks on stakes. I yanked apart the palettes the pavers came on and let the large, four inch, wood blocks sit in the weather for a month. Now I had the stakes, the wood for a fire and an idea. The idea progressed along, during the move and while making phone calls and sending mailers, until it came to fruition last Thursday, when it all ended up in front of the camera. It came together quickly; it’s what happens when my neurotransmitters slam those molecules into their receptor sites and then I spend a few nights sleeping on the idea. My axons and dendrites get all excited, and then with a steak from Pedro the butcher (with the patience of a saint) at Los Paisanos around the corner, it all began.

Wood. Stakes. Steak. Fire. Boy, that was fun.

I have so much of my new work on white, it’s time to start a black series. This is number one.

8:51AM, 10/14/2009 Assorted Hot Peppers

There’s been a debate about this image. Should I have included the funky tomatoes tablecloth under these boxes hot peppers, or cropped it out. I have a couple of shots this week with tablecloths making their debut in my market photos (at least that I know of, I should go and look). The other one, oddly enough, has an assorted hot peppers tablecloth under three bunches of rainbow chard. A lovely, colorful image taken just a moment later, but chard has had it’s fair share of blog time and I didn’t want to post another chard photo. So I’m posting just a little detail for fun.

8:50AM, 10/14/2009 - Rainbow Chard #3 (detail)

Funky tablecloths. Is it me, or is this is a trend?

Either way, I like them.

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.

10:35AM, 8/31/2009 Assorted Mini Peppers at Union Square Market, NYC

Done. I’ve moved in to the new studio. Six trips in Vicki’s Suburu Legacy station wagon with Vicki at the wheel. Without my girlfriend as driver and watchdog, not only would I still be moving, I’d probably have been to the tow pound on 12th Avenue as part of the deal. After all, who was going to stay with the car to keep it from being towed? Vicki. And who was going to keep an eye on the equipment while loading and unloading? Vicki. Who forgot to ask Vicki if she could help with the move?

Me.

Duh. Thank you, Vicki.

I’ve already started unpacking and managed to shoot two jobs over the weekend as well: one for Lincoln Center, and one for AJ, my friends, James and Andrea’s Jazz/Soul band.

Feels like I’m off to a good start.

Green and Red Zebra Tomatoes at Union Square Market

8/31/09, 10:33AM – It’s a long story, let’s just say I was cruisin’ the veggie tables to kill some time.

I looked up green zebras and got a surprize! Tom Wagner (no relation that I’m aware of, honest) is an heirloom tomato breeder (can you herd them, too?) responsible for developing the green zebras. He’s also developed other heirloom tomatoes with names like banana legs, green elf and one named Schimmeig Stoo, which in Manx means striped cavern. Manx is a Goidelic languare spoken on the Isle of Man. Who knew? The red tomato is also known as a red zebra, but no one is taking responsibility for it as far as I can tell.

Anyway, these tasted pretty good in tonight’s salad. Oddly, though, I still prefer the red ones.

Who's your edamame?

Union Square Market, NYC – 1:37PM, August 7, 2009

Edamame, or baby soybeans, are just about my absolute favorite quick appetizer. Cook for three minutes in salted boiling water, strain, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and eat. Yes, they look hairy and blemished, but like most real farm grown fruits and vegetables, they taste good. That’s the thing about commercial fruits and veggies, much of it is “designed” to look nice and travel well, but most of it tastes like cardboard. Me, I’d rather buy food that has flavor and looks like cardboard.

Come to think of it, I think real food is quite beautiful, blemishes and all.