New additions - July 2013

Greetings, all.

This summer, I had the opportunity to travel to nine cities around northern/eastern China; it was amazing on so many levels - and a bit exhausting. I did manage to eek out a bit of time with my new camera and got some great shots. You'll find the newest additions in Architecture, Flora, Food, People, and Place.

The Collections: New Additions

New shots have been added to Architecture, Flora, Food, Nature, People, and Place.  Please use the links to the right to explore the collections.

The Events: Coffee & Crepes

Last week, I headed over to Coffee & Crepes in Cary for another reading by Ashley Memory from her upcoming novel, Naked & Hungry.

Celebrating her main character H.T.'s love of all things food, we sat outside, where we socialized, chatted about the book, and sampled fresh blackberry crepes before Ashley read from the book.  As the evening drew to a close, a nearly full moon rose over the trees.

Be sure to join Ashley for future readings - stay tuned to her site for upcoming events!

The Collections: New Additions

New shots from a recent trip to Washington DC have been added to Architecture, Fauna, Flora, Food, People, and Place.  Please use the links to the right to peruse at your leisure.

The Shot: Tapas Table

During my time in Madrid, I had great testing grounds for my then-new digital camera.  One night, a few of my colleagues and I ventured out into the city for a tapas crawl.

Tapas has a long history in Spain, with various tales of its origins.  Some credit Spanish liquor laws that required a little bit of food to be served alongside alcoholic drinks.  Others claim the small plates were placed on top of drinks to make it easier for servers to carry without spilling or to keep flies from sampling the local brew.  Somehow the mystique of the tradition's origins adds to its allure.

Essentially, every tapas bar will have its own menu, but will tend to specialize in one or two particular dishes.  We started our journey around 8:30 in the evening, still early by Madrid standards, and made our way through the downtown streets in search of Serrano ham, blood sausages, shrimp, and just about any other local delicacies that we could find.

4am in a Madrid taxi

Along the way, we met up with another colleague also out for the evening; he joined our group, which we realized was perhaps that most eclectic and international blend of cultures and languages we'd each been a part of: representing the US, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, the Dominican Republic; speaking a few varieties of English, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese; we ended our evening with an invitation-only after-hours gathering in our final watering hole.

Earlier in the evening, we'd sampled the house sausage, house wine, and house bread at our third locale of the night.  The composition of the shot captures the simplicity of the meal, but the visual as a whole evokes a flood of memories that perfectly captures that entire experience:

The Sites: Madrid

When I finally made the switch from film to digital, I had a great opportunity to test it out on the road: two weeks in Madrid.  Although I was there for business, my colleagues and I managed to squeeze out some time for sight-seeing in the evenings and over the weekend.  


On one of our first evenings, we ventured to Plaza Mayor after dinner.  It was late (late by American standards, anyway) and it was raining, so we had the imposing space mostly to ourselves.  Light bounced across the wet cobblestones, giving the space an almost ethereal quality. 




The shops lining the first floor of the arcades were mostly closed, though one remained open, its walls lined with pictures of bull fighters, with more than a few heads of the unlucky creatures keeping watch over the patrons.


That weekend, I returned to Plaza Mayor during the day.  It was bright, warm, and sunny; the quiet square had transformed into a throng of tour groups bumping against each other in their respective attempts to navigate the space. 

By the time the weekend arrived, a colleague and I were in desperate need of a natural escape from the city landscape.  We made our way to Retiro Park, where she jogged along the trails while I meandered through the garden paths.  The park's variety of horticulture was massive, including a Victorian sculpture garden, and the waterfowl that settled along the backs of the ponds and streams were just as mixed. 

Madrid boasts several museums that house some of the world's most renowned collections and works of art.  The Prado and the Reina Sofia top the list and one could easily spend an entire trip browsing their galleries. 

But the food. Oh, the food.  From seafood to pork to cheese to more types of sausage than I'd ever seen, the food is what I remember most from this trip.  Competing gazpachos, suckling pig, Galatian seafood, paella, and tapas graced our tables with flavor combinations I could only hope to replicate in my own kitchen.  I like to debate the question of "cow or pig" with friends; for me, it depends on where I am, but in Spain, it is the pig that reins supreme.

This was my first time in the country and I was hooked: the food, the architecture, the people, and the culture had the same allure I felt when I traveled to Russia for the first time.  I could easily spend weeks and months here, traveling to the various regions to experience their cultures, languages, and cuisines - and, of course, attempting to capture it through my lens.

The Shot: Street Market

Of so many things I will remember from my first trip to New York City, the food is by far at the top of the list.

As the crossroads of the world, some polls estimate that nearly 170 languages are spoken in the city.  Those that speak those languages bring their cultures and with their cultures comes their food.

Within the first two years of moving to North Carolina, I'd tried more new styles of cuisine than I had in my entire life.  Singaporean, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Persian, Thai: I count myself lucky to live in such a vibrant area with so many culinary options.

And then I went to New York.  I thought I knew what to expect.  I was blown away.

I got off the plane at LaGuardia, took a cab to my friend's apartment, and we promptly set out for dinner, which was Argentine-Turkish fusion.  This set the bar high, but nothing failed to exceed expectations.

Grilled cheese; John's Diner

While I relish and appreciate a wonderful, family-run restaurant where tradition is as much an ingredient as meat, herbs or spices, I'm an absolute sucker for groceries and markets.  We wandered in and out of the grocers and fish markets of Chinatown.  After marveling at the architecture of Grand Central Station, we proceeded to the station market, where the colors of the fruits, vegetables, salads, deli counter, and bakery selections mingled with a myriad of smells that made for an intoxicating cocktail of sensory overload.  Lunch was a simple yet perfectly fresh round of grilled cheese sandwiches at a deli in midtown.

Coffee, Zabar's window

I consider it stupid luck that we didn't make it to Zabar's gourmet market before the last night of my trip (and with only 20 minutes before closing), as I could have easily gone there every day and still not satisfied my curiosity - the cheese case alone could have occupied me for an entire afternoon. 


Even just wandering back down Broadway, the neighborhood markets beckoned with their colors and smells.  For me, this shot captures all of the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and memories of that trip:

Market on Broadway

The Equipment: Digital vs Film

I was a late-comer to the digital photography bandwagon.  I held out for years, clinging to my film, relishing the anticipation of waiting for my shots to be developed, that delayed gratification of finding out whether a time, a place, a trip was sufficiently captured until sometimes well after it had passed.

The beauty of film is that you learn to make every picture count.  You could take continuous shots, hoping that one of them will turn out, but you'd also waste a lot of materials, not to mention time spent changing rolls and space to store all those cartridges.  In the end, you'd pay to develop shots that you'd rather toss.  Instead, over time, you gain a sharper and keener sense of what looks good on that 4x6 (or 4x7 or 3.5x5 or 4x11) strip of paper and you train your eye to find it in the space around you.

Church on Spilt Blood; St Petersburg, Russia

Some of my favorites shots were captured on film.  The entirety of all my trips to Russia are chronicled on film.  I was perfectly content with my equipment as it was: it was small, portable, powerful, and captured consistent shots. I saw no reason to make the switch.

 In May 2007, I went to Jamaica.  While I was there on business, I couldn't help but be in awe of the beautiful scenery around me: the Blue Mountains to the south, the Caribbean to the north, the flowers exploding with color amongst the lush greenery.  I tried to capture what I could.  

I will never know how those pictures turned out.  I put my trust in the developers at the local photo shop as I always had and they failed me on several levels.  This was the turning point.

Topsail Island, NC

That fall, I spent a weekend in Topsail, NC.  It was the last trip where I used my film camera.  I knew it was time to bite the bullet and make the change.  I researched, I browsed, I tested, I looked high and low for the features I needed versus the features I wanted.  In the end, I settled upon the best blend of those things I could find and I set out into the world, a digital convert.

Paella for 12; Madrid, Spain

The first test of the new equipment came in Madrid.  It took time for me to understand that a lot of images can fit on a 4GB memory card, resulting in my compulsive reviewing and deleting of shots immediately after taking them, rather than just running with the moment and dealing with the sorting later.  One evening, our group went for paella.  Paella for 12 people is made in a gigantic pan, requiring two people to carry.  It was beautiful, but I know in my eagerness to review the shots I'd taken, I likely deleted the best one. 

The lesson I took from this experience was to rely on instincts learned from working with film, but also to embrace the freedom that digital storage provides.  I made peace with the fact that no one other than me will probably see 40-60% of the shots that I take, especially when experimenting with a new setting or method.  Wildlife bumps this ratio even higher, as most critters fidget, making great moments even more elusive amongst mediocre snapshots.

Some things about digital photography still bother me: manipulation of images beyond a basic crop or red-eye removal feels impure.  The lure of a darkroom and the skillful artistry to balance the chemicals to coax the images from the filmstrip looms as a set of skills I never fully mastered.  I'd like to think there is still room for both.

The Collections: Food

Grilled Cheese; John's Deli, New York, NY

Few things evoke such powerful memories as food: family dinners, the smells of a bakery, the vibrant colors of fresh produce.  In an instant, we are transported back to our childhood or back to that street market where we sampled the freshest honey we've ever had.  Food is rarely a solitary pursuit; it is something meant to be enjoyed with company, to bring people together around a table.  Even when we dine alone, we are still connected to the source of our sustenance through the buyers, sellers, and growers that brought those ingredients to our plate.


Want to see more?  Explore the collection.