Magda & my iPhone

My birthday was a couple weeks ago and all I wanted to do was take the day off work, 

hang out with my family and make a special meal...home-made pasta.  

That is exactly what we did and I asked Magda to document the meal-making part of the day, 

which she happily obliged--using the camera on my iphone.  

She took a LOT of photos, and I thought it would be fun to share the best ones 

(they were all good!) but here are the best.  Tweaking courtesy of me and Instagram...

Making the pasta dough

Luca & the pasta maker

Putting the dough thru

Still life with Luca

 : )

Fresh pasta drying

Thru a wine glass.

Still Life with Cat

With Lemon

With me!

Awesome job, Magda!!  I love your photos!!

Thanks for taking such fun shots of my special day!!

A Still Life--continued...

I played around with some still life compositions this weekend...I have a lot of cool old stuff

(Greg would use slightly different words to describe my beloved collection of things!) 

And I found that arranging objects in a pleasing manner is not as easy as it looks--its kind of hard, actually!

 For me at least...it took a lot of time trying to figure out what things should go together...

how they should go together...

I like more of a casual, less formal set up for most things
and its hard to be deliberate and accidental at the same time...
I wanted things to go together, but I wanted to create a sort of visual tension...
anyway, here is the collection of images I came up...I think I will get better with more practice.

And more things!!  : )

Flowers as Still Life

This weekend, we had some friends over for a little brunch get-together...

both couples have lovely manners

and they each came bearing beautiful bouquets of flowers.

I had bought a bunch too...so after they left, I was so happy to

be surrounded by all this fresh cut beauty.  

I have been thinking a lot, lately, about...

Still Life

Simple compositions...deep, lush

colors...striking, compelling objects of beauty

all arranged and captured forever...

And, how at some point in my life, I would like to learn to paint with oils--

like in the Dutch tradition of the 16th & 17th centuries...

But in the mean time, 

I can start exploring this whole process and 

create something close with photography--

This is what I made this weekend...

Back to School!!

The storm came and the power went out...dashing all our plans for the weekend.  But we quickly got back to normal (escaping Irene relatively unscathed...) and when Monday morning rolled around--

we were ready for BACK TO SCHOOL!!  

First grade and last year of Montessori pre-school...wow, amazing!  

Shiny new pencils, brand new notebooks; looking forward to seeing old friends.  

Love this time of year.

LUCA IS FOUR YEARS OLD TODAY!

oh...our little baby turns 4 years old today...hard to believe; time goes by so fast--I don't think you ever really grasp how quickly time does goes by until there are little kids around.  They compound this notion ten-fold.  Luca is our big boy now: diapers are long gone, he is swimming on his own, his letters and his numbers are starting to get really good.  No one makes us laugh like he does and he has an amazing way with words.  

We love you Luca...its been amazing to watch you grow.

Tonight, its pizza and presents and tomorrow its a pool party with friends.  

Happy Birthday, our little prince--WE LOVE YOU!!

My Ode to the Tomato

I don't really have the words to express my deep-down love for this amazing fruit so I hope my photos say what I can't...and to make things extra wonderful, I am doing back flips over how well our plants did this year.  I am in heaven with all my tomatoes.  We are reaping what we sowed and I couldn't be happier....

Our tomatoes are gorgeous--The delicious, sun-kissed jewels of summer time.



But this is just the beginning--we will see how happy I am in two weeks when I cry "uncle!"

I think I took over a hundred photos, to express my love and devotion.

 Here are just a few..

I am not sure yet what we are going to do with this crop, but will let you know when I figure it out.

Am thinking about making a tomato tart...

Random: More Tins

The whole tin planter thing got me thinking and I remembered these cute chinese tea tins I have had for, ahem, 12 years now...I bought them in Chinatown, NYC when I lived in Brooklyn and have been hauling them around ever since...but I love them and I thought in the spirit of all things tin, it would be fun to do a photo shoot with them, so here a few shots from the shoot...