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These images are the result of a mini artist date where I visited a bakery that I’d read about in a local magazine, 4 and Twenty Blackbirds Bakeshop in Guilford, CT. Honestly, I was trying to kill two birds (no pun intended) with one stone. I could potentially get some interesting items to photograph and have a killer desert plate for Laura tonight to celebrate the beginning of her maternity leave. The hardest part was not eating the subjects as I photographed them…..
These images are the result of a total impulse buy as I was walking down the aisle of the grocery store on my way to get something totally unrelated. I saw bright and shiny and then the two for $3.00 sign sealed the deal. At least I don’t feel bad about deep sixing the leftovers. I can rationalize it away by assuring myself I just saved someone a few dental fillings.
Well, not really. But I figured I’d play with the leftover idea of shredding. So off to the fridge to have a look. There were carrots and a head of Boston lettuce to play with. Then I got hungry and threw in the edamame and the celery was in the same bin, so what the heck. Today’s shots and my side salad.
It started off as an experiment. And now it’s taken on a life of it’s own and morphed into a body of work. This is a continuation of the Asian foods theme that came from a simple experiment with sushi rice and a box of pasta. Now, each has its own series of images. I look at these images I’ve been working through the past few weeks and wonder where they came from. That’s one of the coolest things about being a photographer – finding something in your own work that makes you realize you have a lot to learn about yourself.
Clockwise from top left: lo mein, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, egg noodles
Today was one of those nuts and bolts days. You know the kind: emails, phone calls, ordering supplies, catching up on paperwork, packaging up some orders. It’s good to have those days. I can wake up tomorrow and not totally dread the in-box or the to-do list. Before you know it, it’s dark out. I have no idea what I am going to shoot and I haven’t paid any attention to my creative self. But at the end of the day I still have to do something.
So, it’s off to the produce aisle. I got the cranberries because they reminded me of a shoot I did about two years ago – an editorial piece on cranberries and all I could find at the time were these lame frozen berries that I had to thaw and rehydrate and shoot really wide open so you couldn’t see just how lame they were. Now, I’ve got no idea what I want to shoot but there are bags of cranberries everywhere. Consider it unfinished business.
Then there are the passion fruits. Expensive. Hmmmm. I have no idea what they look like inside. iPhone to the rescue! A quick google and I get a sneak peak inside. Worth a shot. In the end, they didn’t make the cut tonight but they are very cool inside. I just need about 10 of them to get my image. And for that to happen, they have to go on sale (ie: buy 1, get 9 free).
I pick up the kiwis. Laura looks at me. “It’s been done.” she says. She’s right. On the one hand, it could be sort of a cop out. On the other, it’s a viable “Plan B”. I go with “Plan B”. Maybe I can wrangle something different out of them. Then it’s back home for dinner, House via DVR (while I’m slicing cranberries), then down into the office for a very condensed session and well, here’s what’s on the menu for tonight.
As an added bonus, I’ve got two kiwis left over for breakfast.
So this post doesn’t really have much to do with today’s images. I had planned on writing about the impact of color – it seems to be on my mind these days. But then something happened. It happened yesterday in the late afternoon. I’ll admit it. I was trying to catch some mid-day z’s. Just to be clear, I consider it a bit of a personal victory anytime I can manage to sleep during daylight hours. I equate it with getting some time back – my way of sticking it to the man. I’m not spending, consuming, wasting, or doing anything politically incorrect. It’s just me closing my eyes, taking a quick hop across the random stream of semi-consciousness and turbo tangents that border the State of Sleep and then plunging headfirst into a deep blissful peace occasionally punctuated with excerpts from my own private in-flight HD visual entertainment center. In other words, it’s nap time baby!!
So, my eyes are closed but before I can drift off, I feel Laura shifting positions, trying to get comfortable – something that takes more and more effort as her pregnancy reaches the final stages (we are six weeks away). Finally, she rolls over and asks me where the Snoogle is. What is a snoogle? Well, it’s hard to explain. Actually, it’s hard to explain and do it justice. That being said, I, personally, would describe it as something akin to the large intestines of a mid sized commercial jetliner. It appears to be about sixty feet long, three or four feet in diameter with ascending, transverse and descending sections. I say it “appears” to be because determining it’s actual size compared to the ever expanding pillow population that has taken up residence on our bed has proven to be a difficult task. As far as the eye can see – pillows. Big ones, small ones, hard ones, decorative ones (God help you if you actually get caught with your head on one of these), soft ones, feathered, synthetic, memory foam. Pillows. Lot’s of them.
Anyway, I give Laura the location of the Snoogle – without opening my eyes (admittedly a defensive maneuver – I don’t want to jeapordize my chances here people – I take this nap thing very seriously.). She gets up, I hear some rustling around, and then she returns a minute later. This is followed by a small flurry of grunting, position shifting, and labored breathing. You might want to take a checkpoint here and get a quick visual reference for the Snoogle. Please note the restful symbiosis between our peacefully slumbering model and the supportive, comforting, protective embrace of the gracefully contoured Snoogle. It’s as if they are one. I assure you that this is nothing like what I witnessed when I stole a quick glance over Laura’s way to see how she was making out. Laura’s head was buried in what looked like a gigantic Snoogle turban. Let me add to that: Laura’s very unhappy head. I squeezed my eyes shut quickly – I could selfishly feel the odds of a successful nap experience diminishing rapidly. The next few minutes did nothing to improve those odds. The same series of events would occur repeatedly: grunting, shifting, labored breathing, followed by an extremely brief period of stillness in which I would covertly steal a glance over at her. The scenes played out like this:
Snoogle as gigantic turban. Snoogle as enormous pac-man eating Laura, Laura pile-driving Snoogle, Laura 1, Snoogle 0, Snoogle as giant anaconda crushing Laura, Laura and Snoogle as world’s largest mall pretzel, Laura and Snoogle trapped in La Brea Tar Pit. Eventually, I couldn’t keep a straight face anymore. Nap time was over – but it ended with both of us laughing it out. What can you do?
To be fair, what I was witnessing was no different that the scenes that play out in my work space on an almost daily basis as I try desperately to squeeze some creativity out an ever shrinking period of time – complete with grunts, spastic movements and all. In this analogy, I’m the camera and Laura and Snoogle are me and my subject. We wrestle back and forth. Then there’s that brief stillness – a test to see if it worked. The shutter clicks and – there’s that next scene. Sure it’s a struggle. And it doesn’t always work out how I planned it. Sometimes that totally sucks. Sometimes it’s the best thing ever.
As for today’s images, consider them from my own stream of semi-consciousness. Or maybe they were just in the fridge.
Clockwise from top left: concord grapes, pomegranate seeds, green grapes, orange slices
Sushi is one of my favorite foods – maybe even my absolute favorite. Anytime we go out to a good Japanese restaruant, I immediately scan the menu for the Sushi Sashimi Combo. So. here’s is my Friday Zen and humble tribute to one of my favorite meals. If you happen to be on I-95 and pass through Orange, CT, be sure to check out Wild Ginger for some great Japanese fusion (if you’re not into Sushi, try the tuna or sea bass).
Yes, I know there’s no fish, but even Laura has her limits when it comes to what the house can smell like when she gets home. And by the way, TGIF baby!!!
Pressed for time today and I shouldn’t have been. It’s been one of those days. So, here are today’s shots. Not much time to play, experiment, explore. And no time to dwell on them. They’re here now and in ten more posts they’ll be buried safely away under the “Older Posts” link at the bottom of the page. Tomorrow is another day…..
A much more budget friendly take on an elegant classic. Pasta shells and sparkling cider. Time for lunch.
Patrick,
The hardest part about creativity is trust. Trying to recover that is a process – sometimes joyful, often frustrating. Your intuition has been buried in years of being an “adult”, pushed down, ignored, belittled, ridiculed (sometimes by others, more likely by yourself). But through everything you’ve experienced, your creativity has maintained its own voice and if you could just manage to be quiet – to stop talking, calculating, planning, procrastinating, deflecting, whatever it is you do to satisfy yourself that you are actually in control – if you could just shut the hell up for one minute and be still – if you could just listen – maybe you would hear something interesting.
Later – Yourself
Clockwise from top left: popcorn, sweet corn, beans and something I found in the park, green beans