Showing posts with label Photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Photography. Show all posts
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Visual Communication
I've just added a link at the right to "Visual Communication" also known as my "Photo Class at Pierce Blog." I set this up for the class I taught this spring. Since I'm not teaching right now, I don't post to it very often. But it does have a large number of photography-related links which may be of interest to anyone who takes pictures. Enjoy.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Food, Glorious Food
We spent Friday night gaming at the apartment of J. Keith Van Straaten, former host of "Beat the Geeks" and the live, on-stage version of "What's My Line" which ran several seasons at the Acme Theatre on La Brea. J. Keith's been in New York for the past few months and dropped back here for about a week.
I spent time talking with the delightful Tory Davis, whom I had seen at previous J. Keith parties but whose name I did not remember. The topic of food (starting with cheeses) became common ground. Tory's blog, The Way to Eat, was my first stop this morning and you should check it out. Not only does she write nicely about food, she's a pretty good food photographer as well.
Back in the days when I was a full-time photographer in the greater Washington, D.C. area, some of my favorite assignments were food shoots. Not only was there wonderful stuff for visuals, you also usually got to eat afterwards. For the Washington Post, I photographed food classes (once watching someone make a smaller version of the timbale I later saw in "Big Night"), food competitions (the French chefs from the best French restaurants competed against each other for a trip to a cooking competition in Europe--a pre-Iron Chef evening if I ever spent one), and various other food-related events.
I photographed the late, great Jean-Louis Palladin several times, my favorite being the day he wound up in the wrong race at a "taste of Washington" event. He finished last, but he did finish. I never ate at his famous restaurant at the Watergate, but I did get to sample his food that day and at an evening where some of the great chefs of the world gathered in D.C. I don't know what he was like to work for, but he was an absolutely charming individual and recognized me when I would show up to take his picture. (Here is a link to the Jean-Louis Palladin Foundation.)
Many of the food shoots I did were with or for Phyllis C. Richman, then the food critic for the Washington Post. She was fun to work with and my goal is to have as many cookbooks in my collection as she had in her office at the Post. One day, while I was working at the photo department, she came in and said something about The Russian Tea Room. I mentioned that my then husband had proposed to me there. The article she wrote started with something like "Everyone has a story about The Russian Tea Room," and the proposal was mentioned in passing. I accompanied Phyllis to two of the events where I photographed Jean-Louis. I have no idea how Phyllis disguised herself to do reviews since she seemed to know everyone in food in Washington.
In the summer of 1985, after I had stopped freelancing regularly for the Post's photo department, I went off to Italy for a two-week workshop in food photography. The instructor was Aldo Tutino, who had photographed much of the food for the Time-Life cookbook series. Aldo was a native of a city near Naples (Positano, I think), but he and his family lived in Alexandria, Virginia and had purchased a retirement home near a small town called Vernasca in Emilia-Romagna, one of the great food regions of Italy. (Is there any region of Italy which is not a great food region?) Aldo decided to give teaching photography a whirl and I was one of five students to attend his first workshop.
I don't remember much about the other students, except Gail, who was the chief photographer for Marriott Corp. and an acquaintance of mine in the D.C. photo community. She and I traveled to Italy together on the flight from hell--four hours on the tarmac in New York because of storms--and she gave me advice on where to shop for jewelry when I went on to Florence (Quaglia & Forte.) Another photographer was also from the D.C. area and the other two were from greater New York City.
We worked in large format--4 x 5 transparencies--but there were plenty of opportunities to shoot 35 mm as well. For some of the projects we went off to find props at the local marcato and for others, Aldo and his wife provided everything. There is truly nothing so beautiful as the produce at an Italian open-air market. I had never seen peppers of such a variety of hues before in my life (California's farmers markets, though not so large, remind me of the ones I saw in Italy.) The smells of fresh or aged cheeses were intoxicating. It was remarkably easy to create a variety of photos from a trip to the market. One of the photographs that Gail and I designed and shot was later licensed by the Washington Post, so the trip even helped pay for itself.
In 1987, I attended a board of directors and chapter presidents meeting for the American Society of Media Photographers in Santa Barbara. We had a joint dinner with the Advertising Photographers of America's board of directors and chapter presidents. During the course of the meal, one of my fellow board members said that his idea of heaven was to die and go to Italy where you would drive a little and eat a little throughout eternity. I completely agree.
I spent time talking with the delightful Tory Davis, whom I had seen at previous J. Keith parties but whose name I did not remember. The topic of food (starting with cheeses) became common ground. Tory's blog, The Way to Eat, was my first stop this morning and you should check it out. Not only does she write nicely about food, she's a pretty good food photographer as well.
Back in the days when I was a full-time photographer in the greater Washington, D.C. area, some of my favorite assignments were food shoots. Not only was there wonderful stuff for visuals, you also usually got to eat afterwards. For the Washington Post, I photographed food classes (once watching someone make a smaller version of the timbale I later saw in "Big Night"), food competitions (the French chefs from the best French restaurants competed against each other for a trip to a cooking competition in Europe--a pre-Iron Chef evening if I ever spent one), and various other food-related events.
I photographed the late, great Jean-Louis Palladin several times, my favorite being the day he wound up in the wrong race at a "taste of Washington" event. He finished last, but he did finish. I never ate at his famous restaurant at the Watergate, but I did get to sample his food that day and at an evening where some of the great chefs of the world gathered in D.C. I don't know what he was like to work for, but he was an absolutely charming individual and recognized me when I would show up to take his picture. (Here is a link to the Jean-Louis Palladin Foundation.)
Many of the food shoots I did were with or for Phyllis C. Richman, then the food critic for the Washington Post. She was fun to work with and my goal is to have as many cookbooks in my collection as she had in her office at the Post. One day, while I was working at the photo department, she came in and said something about The Russian Tea Room. I mentioned that my then husband had proposed to me there. The article she wrote started with something like "Everyone has a story about The Russian Tea Room," and the proposal was mentioned in passing. I accompanied Phyllis to two of the events where I photographed Jean-Louis. I have no idea how Phyllis disguised herself to do reviews since she seemed to know everyone in food in Washington.
In the summer of 1985, after I had stopped freelancing regularly for the Post's photo department, I went off to Italy for a two-week workshop in food photography. The instructor was Aldo Tutino, who had photographed much of the food for the Time-Life cookbook series. Aldo was a native of a city near Naples (Positano, I think), but he and his family lived in Alexandria, Virginia and had purchased a retirement home near a small town called Vernasca in Emilia-Romagna, one of the great food regions of Italy. (Is there any region of Italy which is not a great food region?) Aldo decided to give teaching photography a whirl and I was one of five students to attend his first workshop.
I don't remember much about the other students, except Gail, who was the chief photographer for Marriott Corp. and an acquaintance of mine in the D.C. photo community. She and I traveled to Italy together on the flight from hell--four hours on the tarmac in New York because of storms--and she gave me advice on where to shop for jewelry when I went on to Florence (Quaglia & Forte.) Another photographer was also from the D.C. area and the other two were from greater New York City.
We worked in large format--4 x 5 transparencies--but there were plenty of opportunities to shoot 35 mm as well. For some of the projects we went off to find props at the local marcato and for others, Aldo and his wife provided everything. There is truly nothing so beautiful as the produce at an Italian open-air market. I had never seen peppers of such a variety of hues before in my life (California's farmers markets, though not so large, remind me of the ones I saw in Italy.) The smells of fresh or aged cheeses were intoxicating. It was remarkably easy to create a variety of photos from a trip to the market. One of the photographs that Gail and I designed and shot was later licensed by the Washington Post, so the trip even helped pay for itself.
In 1987, I attended a board of directors and chapter presidents meeting for the American Society of Media Photographers in Santa Barbara. We had a joint dinner with the Advertising Photographers of America's board of directors and chapter presidents. During the course of the meal, one of my fellow board members said that his idea of heaven was to die and go to Italy where you would drive a little and eat a little throughout eternity. I completely agree.
Monday, January 15, 2007
It's a Guy Thing
I went to the b & m version of MacMall on Saturday with the intention of purchasing a 17" Mac Book Pro with the 2.16GHz processor which I saw on clearance sale in the catalogue. I'm teaching a photo class which is going to be using Macs rather than PCs. Now, the software isn't that different, but the computers are. In stead of simply selling me the computer I went in to buy, the salesman insisted that I should buy the latest and greatest, which is about $1000 more than the clearance model.
First of all, I've been a PC owner since the mid-80s. I took my first computer programming class in Fortran in 1968 and I edited a book on COBOL when I worked in publishing in the early 1970s. My spouse and I have a mixed marriage. He chose an "idiot friendly" Mac back around the time I was making that all-important PC decision. In the intervening years, my subsequent computers have always cost around a third of what I paid for that $3300 IBM XT with a 20 MB hard drive and a whopping 256 K of RAM. Having this salesman try to convince me to spend close to $3300 for the new Mac Book Pro simply sent me into a place where I left without buying anything.
Guys seem to want to buy the latest whatever gadget. It's all about measurement. Women generally don't go there. The photo instructors had a meeting last week and the three men went on and on with technobabble and the three women instructors looked at each other as if to say "what does this have to do with setting up the new curriculum where I don't have a wet room?" My brain started going to that flat-line place it finds when I hear individual words I recognize strung together in a way I can't comprehend.
I've purchased very nice top-of-the-last-line equipment over the years and I've been happy with my purchases. They do what I need them to do and if it's a little slower--well, slower compared to what. They're generally faster than my last purchase, and that's what I care about.
All of the software I need to teach is available for the PC as well as the Mac and I already own it for the PC. The only advantage to the Mac is that they are less pron to malware attacks. I just ordered a refurbished Epson Photo Stylus R2400 so I'll be ready to lecture competently about printing when that time comes. So, of course, the department ordered new Canon printers. Sigh. Unless something extraordinary happens, I'll just muddle through with the old Toshiba. It's a little sluggish, but it works just fine.
First of all, I've been a PC owner since the mid-80s. I took my first computer programming class in Fortran in 1968 and I edited a book on COBOL when I worked in publishing in the early 1970s. My spouse and I have a mixed marriage. He chose an "idiot friendly" Mac back around the time I was making that all-important PC decision. In the intervening years, my subsequent computers have always cost around a third of what I paid for that $3300 IBM XT with a 20 MB hard drive and a whopping 256 K of RAM. Having this salesman try to convince me to spend close to $3300 for the new Mac Book Pro simply sent me into a place where I left without buying anything.
Guys seem to want to buy the latest whatever gadget. It's all about measurement. Women generally don't go there. The photo instructors had a meeting last week and the three men went on and on with technobabble and the three women instructors looked at each other as if to say "what does this have to do with setting up the new curriculum where I don't have a wet room?" My brain started going to that flat-line place it finds when I hear individual words I recognize strung together in a way I can't comprehend.
I've purchased very nice top-of-the-last-line equipment over the years and I've been happy with my purchases. They do what I need them to do and if it's a little slower--well, slower compared to what. They're generally faster than my last purchase, and that's what I care about.
All of the software I need to teach is available for the PC as well as the Mac and I already own it for the PC. The only advantage to the Mac is that they are less pron to malware attacks. I just ordered a refurbished Epson Photo Stylus R2400 so I'll be ready to lecture competently about printing when that time comes. So, of course, the department ordered new Canon printers. Sigh. Unless something extraordinary happens, I'll just muddle through with the old Toshiba. It's a little sluggish, but it works just fine.
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