Food

I'm starting to notice a pattern in our posts. I talk about food a lot.

We don't eat a lot while we're still working cause both of us get food coma sugar crash 45 minutes later and have to be mightily persuaded to go running after a shot. So it's a light lunch and coffees at four.

But dinner is another story: I love sitting down to dinner with James at the end of the day, to talk about all the people we met, and what we're going to shoot the next day, and all the crazy things that happened on location or on the road. Like that time the poor woman's suitcase started vibrating at baggage check--that really happened--or the time that rental car agent in Pula locked up his office and came with us to have a beer while we signed contracts and talked about global warming and the disappearance of the bees.

It's relaxing and makes sense, since there are two of us and we need to take some time out to confirm what we got, and what we don't got for the story at hand.

And then after dinner James takes me out looking for night shots. Romantic, right?

So I've got this rolling roladex in my head: where to eat in.... I get most of this information from magazines we shoot for, their shootlists, and I search the websites of budget travel (great printouts!) , travel + leisure, the new york times before we go, and I check chowhound on my phone if I'm really stuck on where to eat in say, Tulsa. I also keep a journal, so I know where to go next time, or if I happen to be in court (don't ask) and the guy sitting next to me waiting for his turn at the bench once lived in Budapest, and he's got tips for me. So ask me if you need a recommendation, or have one for me. I want to eat local everywhere we go, not because it's better for the planet (since, let's be honest, after the 12 flights we took last month, there's an an endangered ice shelf with our name on it) but because if you don't eat the food, you're not really there.

PS: here's what to eat if you find yourself in Istria --
Bottle of Malvazija
Grilled Squid to start
Bronzini, traditionally served with swiss chard and potatoes
Pasta with truffles
local sheep cheese plate

Domino Loves Chicago (and so do we)

Tearsheets time: we've followed Domino's columnists to Chicago to check out the shopping and wine scenes. In last month's issue, we fought ice, snow and thieves (that subtitle: "Rita Konig suggests a GPS" is a little inside joke: hers was stolen from our car while we were shooting one of these locations. Avis rental car theft insurance does not pay for a stolen GPS, btw.) For this month's issue: we went back to Chicago a month later, and had another one of those lovely sandwiches at Lovely, and another cannoli at Pasticceria Natalina in Andersonville, oh, and shot a story on wine with Cynthia Kling. One page two: the photogenic staff of Domino!





One of the best perks of this gig was that we got got to sit in on Don Sritong 60-minute wine class too: "The best wine for you is the wine you like best!" I wish that were true (I have expensive tastes), but I learned to grow beyond my old method: to buy wines from places you've been only works so well. Case in point: Croatian Malvazija is absolutely delicious. But, they sell only one bottle at Astor Place Wines. So you are a little limited on choice there. Guess I have to go back.

Or figure out where the Croatians of New York hide the good stuff.

Pictures of us in Istria

I know what you really want to see: more pictures of us. Well here you go. Please vote in the comments section for your favorite contributors photo, just in case. At the base of the church above Piran, Slovenia:




Here's Jessie in Groznjan, a gorgeous artist and musicians village in the mountains. When the town was deserted in the 70s, the government gave it to the artists to use, for free. Now, a tourist destination. Ah, communism.



This one I took of James just after he came down from the tower of St. Euphemia church in Rovinj. The tower had just well-worn two by fours that wrapped all the way up. Thankfully, our next location was a lovely little restaurant.



Here's James again, at an ice cream parlor on the main square (an oval really) in Piran right after we wrapped the last roll.

Notes on Greece

Speaking of Andy, while we were in Epiros, photographing a 14th Century monastery that perilously overhangs an endless gorge, I sent him a message, because as a backpacker I knew he'd dig the place. I sent him detailed coordinates of the hiking trail so he'd be able to look it up in google earth. No need. He was there with my dad a few years ago. They hiked the Vikos Gorge, stood just where we stood over the precipitous gap in the earth, and never told me about it. My dad was stationed in Albania at the time, so it's not a stretch geographically, but you gotta know that feeling when you look on a corner of the earth with awe, is a feeling too exotic for seconds.

James just made us an at home version of something we drank in Greece nearly continuously: the cafe freddo (which is Italian), but the locals drink a cafe frappe, made with nescafe and espresso, I think, blended like a milkshake with ice. Why don't we have these in New York!? The pitiful ice coffees from our local place just don't have that kick, or the cute straw. If anyone knows where I can get one here, let me know! James made a spinach pie that was good too, but it didn't have those 11 other herbs and greens from Epiros that makes a real pita. Thank goodness all our stores here carry Greek yogurt, or I might have missed my flight home.


In a meeting a few months ago I told a photo editor who asked us where we'd like to go, off the top of my head I said that we'd love to shoot a story on Greek food. The universe conspires... We keep a map of the world in my office, and a few years ago we started to put pins in the places we'd like to see next. We got five pins each. Out of those original ten places, we've already been to half. We moved 5 pins to new locations, and yesterday, we got to move the Greece pin to...Costa Rica. FYI: there's pins still in Buenos Aires, Mont St. Michel, Antigua, the Azores, New Zealand...

We learned a valuable lesson in Greece: another use for Polaroids. When there's a language barrier, we memorize the phrase: May we take your picture? (in greek, phonetically: Moo eh-pee-TREH-peh-teh na sass PA-ro fo-to-ghraf-EE-ah?) Everyone says yes, but it is a concession, a gift these subjects give us that allows us to do our job. We began taking an extra polaroid of the shot and giving it to them, the only thing we have to give as a gift to them in return. Never in my life as has something so simple been met with such joy! Giggles, smiles, profuse handshakes. It's fun to watch them pour over the shot with their friends, put it away carefully to take home. Medium format polaroid is gorgeous as most of you know, and not to brag, but the people we photograph seem pretty excited about how good they look. The beauty and generosity of these strangers who let us take their picture! It was a powerful daily reminder of the sheer power of the medium we have chosen to communicate through.

Istria, Bonn, Epiros

We're off on a summer shoot adventure: first to Croatia to photograph the Istrian penisula, then a weekend with James's brother Michael and his wife Rebecca in Bonn, Germany, and then an adventure in northern Greece (where Byron once lost a pair of slippers).

I'll be posting updates on our our adventures here. I feel I know what to expect, since we've been to Albania, right next to Greece, and on the same coast as Istria.

I should know better than to try to visualize a shoot before it is in front of me. Everywhere has its surprises.

Here's our dates:

In bookstores now!

Remember that lifestyle book we styled and photographed with Robyn Moreno last year? Practically Posh is now available from Harper Collins. We're going to miss the release party, but can't wait to see the final product. Browse the book:



Robyn writes that her style guide is for "daring dames who refuse to be slowed down by life's practicalities," who "let ingenuity and attitude be your currency." Is this you? Get a copy on Amazon.

And yes, on the first of our 9 shoot days together, we did get her naked. :)

Art Networks update

This is a current map of our ART NETWORK. I've talked about the project here as we went along with this work in progress. We've designed a central location to access pictures of each of the subjects and their connections to one another. At the site, click on each image to access a few selects from these shoots.

We begin by photographing an artist in their studio preparing for a show. At the end of each session we ask our subjects: Who should we photograph next? In other words, who inspires you, collaborates with you, and influences your work? In this way we hope to document a network of art practice and admiration, and to document the creative flow that keeps us all going.

Shaun El C Leonardo is performing his latest piece "Bull in the Ring" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in October as part of the show Hard Targets-Masculinity and American Sports. For more information, or to RSVP for the private performance on the 8th, get in touch with him through his website.

Shaun recommended earlier this spring that we should go to Athens to photograph an artist in residence there. At that time we had no plans to go there, but James turned to me and said, "Well, it looks like we've got to go to Greece." And here we are a few months later, packing for a trip with a few extra days in Athens! I sure hope this new artist's schedule accommodates two strangers pointing lights in his face two weekends from now.

Makes you think those "positive thinking" folks might be on to something, right?

On newsstands now!

Last September we photographed Travers at Saratoga, one of the lead up horse races to the Derby. We'd never been to a horse race before--our first time out there, having press passes that got you right up along the rails was pretty awesome. This is the jockey that won the Kentucky Derby last year! We had a lot of comments from the regular horserace photogs with their big rigs, but by the end of the day we had made some brothers-in-arms (it was hot!!) earned a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T and we certainly learned a few things. I can still hear the thundering and smell the horses when I look at these pictures again.



Check "A Day at the Races" out in the August issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray or on our tearsheets page. Thanks to Gina, Rachel, and the ladies in the photo department for a great assignment.

Families and Photography

Both of us have had the opportunity this month to shoot in front of our families, James with his dad in Kansas, and the both of us in Monroe, Louisiana at a slew of family events: birthdays, a baptism, and a wedding.

I'm not the only shooter in my family: my stepfather Tim (that's him with my mom) gave me my first camera, a Pentax K-1000, and took the time to show me how to shoot, develop, and print in the darkroom he maintained in the hall closet. My cousin Sarah shoots for the Army. A friend of the family, Mey-ling is just starting her love affair with the camera. Our Mamiya always draws a crowd of admirers, though not as big a crowd as my baby niece Emma.

In both of our families, we are the only professional artists. But we are not the only ones to run our own business, or even run our own businesses as a couple (my parents taught me all about that too), or take risks on earning a living doing what you want to do with your days. Our family's collective resumes are testament to at least trying to define work as play (i.e.: fly-fishing store, scuba-diving shop, restaurants on St. John and at a ranch in Arizona, the boomerang man, and at least 4 employees of the girl scouts). Right now, among my cousins, there's a few band members making their first cd, a pilot giving lessons, and quite a few dreams in drawers waiting for the right moment and real estate. We've come a long way from the pioneers in South Dakota my grandmother grew up with but we're keeping alive their penchant for big moves.

So there were a number of around the table conversations about what we do for a living, how we survive in New York, how it "works."

"Do they really just email you a shootlist like on Charlie's Angels?"
"Can you pitch a story on _____?
"You still use film?"
"Are you going to give up teaching?"
"Does the magazine pay your expenses?"
"How do you get jobs?"
"Does this mean you can never leave New York?"
"How will you have children?"
"Don't you ever wish you could write the stories too?"
"How much does it pay?"
"Can you shoot X's wedding?"

I wish I could say I have answers for all of these questions. Some of them, we do have pat answers for. Yes, it is like Charlie's Angels, yes, we use film, but do digital too when we need to, I'm taking a year off teaching, but I love it and will definitely return to the classroom when the time is right. We only shoot for the weddings we love.

The questions I don't have a ready answer for really get me thinking and talking over the iced tea. Creative careers, parenthood, technology, the economy: these don't seem to have road maps. Every time I visit my grandmother (who turned 80 this weekend!) pats me on the hand and reminds me that what we're doing with our lives always turns out to be the right thing to be doing.

So thanks for all your advice. I'm forever all ears!

In NYC one week

We've had a wonderful time here in Louisiana, but it's time to come home and pack for Croatia. So we're flying back to Brooklyn tomorrow, and we want to see everyone before we head out!

Chicago for Domino

We shot Chicago's shopping (and pastry!) scene this month's Domino Magazine with their fabulous columnist Rita Konig. Follow the link for the listings, but for the pictures, you're going to have to buy the magazine!

We're finishing up another story for the magazine tomorrow, so if you need an excuse to subscribe...

Summertime Already?

A month has gone by while we've been busy shooting, teaching, and learning Spanish. The little bit I've learned in my six-week intensive course has already given us so much--portraits, places, access--that we could never have talked our way into with hand gestures. I'm going to do my homework one of these days, so ¡Ojo!

We've added a new artist to our Art Project: Shaun El C. Leonardo. This triple threat: painter, sculptor, and performance artist was introduced to the Network by Alejandro Almanza Pereda. He's at work on his next piece "Hard Targets - Masculinity and American Sports" for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. You can view more from this shoot here. Kodak has generously supplied us with a case of film to keep this project going, and we have two more artist portraits here in New York coming up this month.

Finally, with the talented, imaginative, and patient designer Sandra Garcia, we have been re-designing our logo and promo cards. Drop us a note if you want us to send you one when we ship 'em out next week.

Busy week! Colorado, Kansas & Chicago

We're off to photograph three small stories across the Midwest!

First things first, we'll celebrate Kit Nichols and Charnan Lewis's wedding this weekend in Washington Square Park. I'm going to photograph the happy couple in their wedding clothes on the F line where they met (only in New York!), then when we arrive, James will create a wacky, joyous portrait of them in the Washington Mews to match their wacky, joyous love for one another. So far props include: a flute, some balloons, a sock monkey, a rocking horse, and a copy of Bartheme's 60 Stories. If you know either of them, these items will not surprise you.

Then on Sunday it's off to Colorado for Men's Journal to make two portraits in the Denver area. I can't wait to share those stories with you when the magazine comes out--the shoot list cracks me up.

On Monday night, James is headed to Kansas to photograph Wilson Lake, a gorgeous mountain biker's paradise right in the middle of the state in the middle of the country. I'm stepping aside to let James's dad be his right hand man for two days. Take your father to work day! I know they are going to have a great time out there, and no one knows Kansas like Jim Owens.

On Wednesday night, James will join me in Chicago for a Domino shoot on Thursday. We're planning to stay the weekend and enjoy Joe's loft and a long weekend off tooling around Chicago. Anybody know any great wine stores?

Alejandro in Brooklyn

As promised, here's the scoop on Alejandro's next show:

My Little / Membrane, curated by Zeljka Himbele-Kozul and William Heath, opens at NURTUREart Gallery at 910 Grand Street in Williamsburg on May 9th. Featured artists include Michele Beck and Jorge Calvo, Thomas Doyle, Bethany Jean Fancher, Vlatka Horvat, Yuliya Lanina, Janell Olah, Jihyun Park, Anna Stein, David McQueen, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, and Traci Tullius.

Talk next Friday at IFA

I'm participating in a panel at the Institute of Fine Arts (1 East 78th Street) on Friday, May 9th as the second part of a symposium called Forms of Seeing: Imaging, Boundaries, and Technologies. My panel, called "Technologies," meets from 1:00 to 2:30. I will be giving a brief talk (with powerpoint!) on my research into politics, abolition, and daguerreotypes in the 1850s, followed by Q&A. If you want to come early or stay late, good panels, discussions, and lunch with other researchers from across the disciplines will be happening all day, all free. Click through the link for the schedule.