Happy Mardi Gras!

James just walked into my office offering a spatula full of goodness: "king cake cracklins," or icing, butter, and cinnamon that he scraped up from around the edges of the king cake he's making.

(Did you know I got to know this amazing man in a kitchen? Our first date was on the Saturday before Mardi Gras, 12 years back. We'd been working together 14 hour days for 2 weeks at a cafe right on the parade route near Louisiana Avenue. We decided to have a little fun before the season ended by closing up after the Saturday parades and heading down to the Marigny. When he walked me all the way home because the streetcars weren't running, I knew this might last past Lundi Gras.)

We're having some dear New Orleans friends over for dinner (all the way down from Park Slope :) There will be crawfish gumbo for dinner and great Mardi Gras mixes this year from Brent, and from years past from Kat and Alex (Oh ye Royal Duke and Duchess of Schweg, may I please have my copy of 2009?). I'm hoarding a big mason jar of doubloons I inherited that goes back to parades that rolled in 1969. They've got Abita at my local beerstore. So we're all set to laissez les bon temps rouler.

I feel like the Queen of Rex in exile.

Can't wait to go down for a long visit in March. We're gonna see Celeste shoot her own wedding, check out Cedric and Mia's contemporary art gallery AMMO, visit our peoples on Laurel street. Then I'll head to Monroe for a week with family. Call me then if you wanna hear me slide into my native accent.

Hope you all have a good gras, but if you're finding it hard to get your funky on, call us a little later on, and I'll see if I can't hook you up with a bowl of James's gumbo.

The new Standard in T+L

1) An affordable hotel in Manhattan. 2) An affordable hotel in the Meat Packing District. 3) An affordable hotel in Manhattan in the Meat Packing District that makes you feel like Don Draper. 4) The same as above that straddles the one-day-in-the-future brilliant High line path.

Almost makes me want to be a tourist in NYC again... For now, I'll stick with Brooklyn.


For more picture and information, check out the March issue of Travel + Leisure, on newsstands!

And if that isn't enough, try going literally next door to DeBragga and Spitler, where some of the premiere beef aging in the city is housed....It is, in fact, the Meat Packing District.

Packing it in and out: Food Arts

Once upon a time, the notion that the underpass around the South Street Seaport in Manhattan would smell less like seaport and more like South Street sounded as unlikely as...um..."fish for brains." But here we are, 2009, and the fins, bellies, and scales have all but completely vanished. And yet, 'round the island and up a bit, the Meat Packing District--fashionable, habitable, and tourable--is still the cities meat locker. Smells like it, looks like it, and acts like it. For now.

A while back, Food Arts sent us deep into the frozen corridors of DeBragga and Spitler to shoot an industry story on aged beef. Here's a bit of the journey and some of the story. (block text by Katy Keiffer) I'm still temped to find my way to one of the better steak restaurants in town and hunt for what's supposed to be a magical and palette-specific experience of eating some of the finest aged beef in the world. Although Jessie, a pesce-tarian for years, spent just as much time in the locker as me (see last image post), she won't be joining me.

With menus boasting steaks up to 75 days [aged] in some cases, this is not necessarily meat to everyone's taste. Nor does it fit every pocketbook. Highly aged beef is a very personal and individual choice. In the words of Craftsteak's [Tom] Colicchio, dry aged beef of over 45 days, can become, "finky, musty, very gamey." [....] The loss of volume through dry aging can be breathtaking. Marc Sarrazin of DeBragga and Spitler, a New York City supplier, says dry aged beef can lose as much as 15 percent of its weight, and up to 50 percent of its yield thanks to combined weight loss and the heavy trimming necessary to remove the most dessicated parts of the aged meat[....]
In the end, a steakhouse will survive on good meat and fail with bad. There is no hiding in this format, no matter how great the sauces and sides. According to Colicchio, the steakhouse trend will continue to thrive. "Why would it stop? Meat has always been, and always will be, a staple of the American diet." He ended the conversation with a tag line that the beef industry should pay him for: "When times are bad, people are going to splurge, and beef feels good."

Quite nearly the Gilbert and George of the Meat Packing District, Marc and George of DeBragga and Spitler are among the kings of the aging meat market in New York City. They supply among others Craftsteak and Soho House with meats aging anywhere from under a week to 42 days.


After hours in the cold and after photographing the engaging and likable meat-men under the tracks (the high line runs right above the entrance to DeBragga and Spitler), we got the final maceration-in-progress low down. Below, from left to right, are short loins aged 42 days, 14 days and 1 day.
Now, if only we could have packed a grill, smuggled in some charcoal, and turned off that huge drying fan swirling near-freezing temperatures at my partner.


Get thee to a steakhouse.

In the meantime, more from the Food Arts article can be found here: http://www.foodarts.com/Foodarts/FA_Feature/0,4041,385,00.html

January Travel Journal (4 of 4): Singapore

(Destination: Singapore?)

City of Nights: Singapore comes alive at night. The temperatures drop to mild upper 70s after days of 90...many days...everyday in fact. Singapore sits right on the equator just at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula, so the days are warm and consistent all year round. The Harbor plays a huge role, when just around dusk locals and tourists both descend on the the downtown area, apparently with one thing on the mind---FOOD!

Two of my favorite experiences were had in each of Chinatown's two hawker centers. The hawker stands are like street food, but nationalized, celebrated, cheap, and made nearly perfect by government health regulations. In fact, there so good that going to a fancy restaurant really is just a luxury of ambiance. The first stop was at the Maxwell food center, a spur of the moment craving to sample the famed Chicken Rice of Singapore. Delicious. $2.50 for almost half a chicken and a mounded plate of perfect chicken-infused rice. It turns out that I happened to stumble upon the same Chicken Rice stand that Anthony Bourdain went to for his show on Singapore food (fun to watch and down-loadable on itunes.)

The second (above) was on the first night of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations. It was like a Chinese, foodie Mardi Gras! The place was packed, and the Fried Oyster and Eggs we devoured alongside a couple giant Tiger beers set us straight. More below.



We spent a lot of our time near the Quay, which was once a rambling and rambunctious fishing and trade port part of town, and was founded by the British for that. Since the 1950s or so, the shipping and fishing has left the heart of town, and a very young, and quite westernized CBD has risen up in its stead. But even there, and even in the heart of the very young convention center near the harbor, there always seems to be a delicious hawker center right around the corner!


(From left: break-time near Clark Quay, a party scene, a little like Bourbon Street, only more welcome--though I am sad to say that there is a Hooters; middle, cool nook of a hawker center near the convention center; right: Boat Quay and the central business district. Below, local skaters.)

January Travel Journal (3 of 4): Paris

My priorities were pretty simple in Paris. Spend time with our favorite friends there, find a good traditional croque-monsieur for weekday lunch, see the Seine, and perhaps squeeze in a soccer game (watched Bourdeaux win over Paris in a great game).

Gray weather kept our camera packed away for the most part, that and good long dinners. The above is at the Bibliotheque Nationale. It reminds me a bit of Milan Kundera, and I haven't decided which I like best, the above version or the one below. (Perhaps a vote is in order on the comments page.) ‎The library hosted a pretty good exhibit "70' La Photographie Americaine" in their gallery. A bit more can be found here about the show. The show had an interesting collection of some of the majors like Arbus, Evans, Frank, Friedlander--Did anyone see that the Madonna photograph sold for twice it's expected price? It's amazing she was hired for $25 dollars for the photo shoot in '79 when she was strapped for cash--Mary Ellen Mark, Meatyard...And the show even had a Larry Fink image that looks a bit like an image PDN published in the '08 Photo Annual from his "My sexual safari" series.

A couple days later (and 2 croque-monsiers later), we made a quick stop by the Seine before leaving town.




Above, Xabi and Raphaelle, at the Seine. Below at home. (Two of our favorite subjects)


Some may have heard that much of France is a couple weeks into a strike against measures taken by Nicolas Sarkozy in the economy and in public works, including education. Both our friends are teachers in the French university system. We wish them well in their struggles.

Bonne Chance!

January Travel Journal (2 of 4): Belgium

(Nothing like a few artists, an alleyway/parking lot, and a bucket of paint to make things look particularly Flem-hip)

Two hours in Brussels, -4 degrees Celsius, and a few rolls to burn. The Galleries in Brussels must be incredible in the summer, full of warm air and light. In this year's deep freeze, the open air mall-meets-ornate-train station was filled with swift moving pedestrians and stylish overcoats.

Above, a cool bar/cafe on Rue du Marché au Charbon; Sommer (below), at ArSene/50 sent us to the Charbon area to find the cool cafes. (Sorry we missed the dance party, Sommer!).

(Bellow: The grand golden plazas in the heart of Brussels, a gorgeous gallery/mall, and Bar Fontainas.)

Belgium was a stopping point on our journey to see Jessie's brother Andy, who is studying in Leuven and recently proposed to Quinn. Cheers to you both!

January Travel Journal (1 of 4): Maastricht

(Destination: Masstricht?)

We arrived late in the small but super-dutch-chic Maastricht to find a frozen but happy town. (A good solid freeze can really wreak havoc on the train system in the area.) The hotel rooms were ablaze in red mood-light, a "big lip" sofa in the corner of the room, and out the window, a blend of industry, early 20th century hearths, and luminous rooftops. One could almost expect a shivering Ewan McGregor belting out some kind of musical while hanging from the moon.

Ah, the Netherlands.



Treaty of Maastricht, anyone?

Old-world Europe still reigns. I love shooting these old European towns in black and white. I can only assume the car was on loan for a film. Surely.

(The Meuse river bisects the town and feels a bit like crossing the Liffey each day. An old church in the center of town has been converted into one of the most inspiring bookstore/coffee shops ever.)

Too cold for trains, but the bicycles still work! I don't think the art of riding bicycles has been nationalized and perfected quite like this anywhere else in the world. Maybe, but the Dutch make it look so good.




(Clicking on the images will open a larger version of the pictures.)

Happy Holidays Home and Abroad!

Jessie and James wish you the very best. Cheers to all and to all a new and fantastic year!
May '09 bring, among other things:

the magic bus
the enchanted tourist
the wishful thinking
and of course...many oysters and many cheers

PRINT SALE OPENS TODAY!

As of this morning, our print sale "storefront" is open at our website.
Click on the tab "Print Sales" on the far right. We are offering 47 existing 11x14 prints for $40 each, including shipping. A holiday gift to our fans, while supplies last! Custom print options in several sizes are also available. We've put three pages of images up, so tool around and see if you see something you'd like, and we'll ship it out to you. I look forward to sending these pictures to their new homes.

Happy December!

It could be me

We've taken part in Paul Paper's global art project. Check it out
Here's how Paul describes the project:

"Could be me" is a project exploring possibility of one artist occupying another's space. It is a visual adventure and an interpretation of the same sentence by different artists worldwide .

Hundreds of artists created a piece which incorporated the sentence: "It could be me but it's actually Paul Paper." The website on the other hand, is named, "It could be paul paper, but it's acutally ____." The best way to experience the piece is to click on the names on the left at random to see how other artists incorporate this other identity into their work. Illustrators rule.

Paul, a photographer who lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, contacted us out of the blue, and sent us some gorgeous moody postcards. We shot our contribution in Kate's backyard, because it's looking a little Gothic these days, with the sudden change in season.

Print Sale!

Our portfolios change several times a year, to showcase our new work. We have four books of 40 pages each, and every couple of months, James spends a few days in the darkroom cooking up fresh images to show our clients. But we sigh that when a new picture goes in, and old favorite has to come out.

After four years of making pictures, we pulled box after box of prints off of the shelf, and found we had a seven inch tall stack of beautiful, archival prints stashed away! You'll notice some of these pictures still appear in our portfolio, but we discovered that we had more copies that we can use.

We saved one of each for ourselves and now we want to offer the rest of them to you at cost for $40 each. We have two or three copies of about 50 images available in 11x14. We will package and ship them off to you at no additional cost. We can even price having them framed and shipped by our local frameshop. Here's a taste:






We will be pleased as punch to see these pictures going out to their new homes!

We will launch a temporary online storefront where you can see and purchase pictures, just in case you want to add a little Morgan & Owens to your holiday shopping list. Keep an eye on this space announcing the opening day of the print sale, coming soon!

And as always, if there's a picture you love but don't see here, let us know by email and we'll print one up for you.

PDN video of the Jumbotron

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1847329262/bctid1870975536

A bird, a plane? No, it's the Jumbotron

Kodak has our "names in lights" on its Time Square Jumbotron!

(Yep, those are our names there! Sorry, we decided to play it "cool" and not drag our Mamiya out to Times Sq. with us. This is taken from our phone.)

We, along with our fellow PDN 30, will be cycling on the screen until Nov. 10. The cycle script begins: Kodak Celebrates the New Faces of Photography: PDN's 30 (or something pretty close to that). As the names slowly march up the screen, each coming to rest in the center, the names span out, and three or four images from the showcased photographer slide across the screen. It's quite nicely paced and shows a little peek into each of our work. We're in excellent company up there! One photo editor wrote to me giddily saying "...so cool."

We've been down to check it out; we've watched from several angles: From the infamous Planet Hollywood third floor bar--not exactly sure what it's infamous for, but it does remind me a little of a Biloxi casino (no offense, Biloxi); from the second and fourth floors of TGI Fridays--I'm beginning to feel a bit sorry for those who come to town and go to these places (pull it together people!); from the street--the middle, the side, the across-the-way (does the Naked Cowboy really do that everyday? Oh wait, now the NYPD men are posing for a picture with those women too.); and, our favorite, from walking underneath into the Marriott, which reminds me of all those hotels we've stayed in to get here--no, not the lovely beach cabanas and yoga retreats, or the lovely mountain lodges, or the lovely spas, the lovely design hotels, the lovely city centre apartment rentals...no, it's more like a giant airport hotel meets convention center.... Either way, it feels like adventure, and that feels good.

Below are the images we have gliding through Times Sq. as we speak.... I wonder if they can see it from space. :) The image in the upper left will be shown at a Kodak-hosted gallery show and reception on Thursday night as part of their PhotoPlus Expo. We've selected all of the images from our work with people. We love the places and things we photograph, but people make most of what we do happen.

Thanks, Kodak, for bringing us out!

Kodak Honors the PDN 30

Kodak Honors the PDN 30 and yours truly with a gallery show in Chelsea, a few pictures on their jumbotron! We'll keep you posted...

Romantic Places

One of our favorite editors contacted us for brainstorming a story on "make-you-fall-in-love-locations" that we've shot (Romance on a shoot? Who has time for that? :) or just found on vacation. James and I reminisced long and hard about it, so I figure I might as well share our personal "top romantic places" with you.

I think Budapest wins hands down for gorgeousness and romance: the cafes, the steam baths, the cheap restaurants, the nightlife, the young designers, the opera. We rented a beautiful apartment with three close friends and all ate too much strawberry soup and had daily massages. We'd love to go back, just the two of us and our Mamiyas.

Boulder Utah, a tiny town in the middle of Escalante NP. Lots of hiking and off-roading, which I think is devastatingly romantic. Just dusty me and James, and no one around for 60 miles. A little scary too, but risk and romance go hand in hand.

For the New England Bed & Breakfast set, I'd go with Castle Hill in Cape Cod. Just what it sounds like. Shot that one for T+L.

For the Bed & Beer set I'd go with the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The delta town is probably too down on its luck for most, but you get to stay in a barely renovated tenet farmer's shack and sit on the porch all night playing the piano for the mosquitoes and cotton and go to sleep under homemade quilts. We like to stop there, eat catfish at Morgan Freeman's restaurant, dance at a jukejoint, buy some blues cds, before heading on to my family's place in Louisiana. A great place to acclimate to a slower pace. A little ways south of the Memphis airport. $50/night!

For the 18th century mansion set, I'd go with the Bellinter House in County Meath, Ireland we shot for Sherman's Travel. The redesign is sumptuous, with great huge wooden carved beds, a spa, a lovely, just slightly avant garde (think Oscar Wilde meets Bloomsbury meets Moss) bar in the drawing room, a Michelin chef's restaurant in the basement. Not a lot to do in the area, but fish and ride horses, but then, it's only 45 minutes drive to Dublin.

Amansala Tulum, and Tulum generally, are my favorite sit-around and relax white sand beaches. It's gorgeous, eco friendly, and cheap, if you like fish tacos. Who doesn't like fish tacos? Amasala's very yoga girl centric (i.e. not romantic). Most of the other women there were from NYC for "bikini boot camp." The downside is the long drive out there from Cancun.

I hear El Salvador's beaches are cheap cheap cheap, and we want to visit my family there asap. The South American Surf Championships are there at La Libertad this month. Dad and Kathy's new place is only a few hours from Belize, Honduras, daily flights to Costa Rica and Cancun. It would be a great place to base camp for shooting the area, so I'm researching the surf reports, working on my espanol.

Happy traveling!