use real butter

Recipe: bibimbap

Having spent a good deal of my adult life in or around university settings, you’d think I’d be accustomed to the flow of people in and out of my geographic location. That’s the nature of a university and you come to expect that a lot of your friends will move away eventually. But I’m not accustomed to it. This week, we said good-bye to our neighbors. They are more than just neighbors, they are good friends.

at our place for barbecue

We have had all manner of “interesting” neighbors, but Tom and Kellie were the best ever. We kept an eye on each other’s houses when we were out of town. We borrowed their power tools, they borrowed our ladder. They were always willing to taste test my cookies, cakes, pastries, whatever! Anytime we dropped by for just a minute, it always ended up taking as much as an hour because we always had plenty to talk about, to share. We took care of each other’s dogs and cats when emergencies came up. We laughed and chattered together while shoveling the deep snow from our driveways in the middle of the night. So despite how crazy busy March had been (and continues to be), we had to have them over for dinner before they headed to their new home in Montana.

at a big anniversary party for tom’s parents

As they drove away Friday afternoon, they honked good-bye. Jeremy told me Sunday morning that it feels lonely with them gone. It does feel lonely. We’ll surely see them this summer, but in the meantime – we are already missing them very much. Yet, part of this flux of people in my life involves those who are arriving and also returning. Our good friend, Marianne is finally back after months spent on the ice (Antarctica). Manisha held a lovely dinner to celebrate her return as well as find an excuse to introduce us to some of her phenomenal regional cooking from the west coast of India. Oh mai!!

manisha presents fried monkfish

kitt refrained from making funny faces

ivy gourd (i am in love with this vegetable)

lemon pickle chutney and grated mango chutney

gathering for a feast

I don’t lose sight of the time spent with the people I love. I’ve learned enough by now to know that it matters when you are together because everyone is busy and we all take each other for granted to some degree. A lot of times, we never fully realize just how special some people are until they are gone. So I’m reminding myself that no matter how busy I get, I should try to make that time. [Of course, get-togethers seem to revolve around food in my circle of friends and family…]

making marinade for galbi

slice the beef thin

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: buddha’s hand citron vodka

Our “wake up earlier” project works quite well. I’m sitting down and working before 7am each morning, although with everything I have on my plate it’s never early enough. Damn you, Sleep!! I was able to catch Andrew on Monday before he slipped off to Austin for SXSW. We went to Nick and Willy’s in Boulder for some slow-roasted chicken. That is some gooooood chicken. If you haven’t tried it, you really ought to. After that, we set to work on some items for the photography workshop. Whenever it feels like the organization and planning is bogging me down, I talk to Andrew and he gets me jazzed up again. Fan-freaking-tastic!

andrew advises

I finally culled my 2000+ photos from the Sandhill crane shoot (two words: marathon session) and have a few more to share before we move on to other fun and exciting things. I’m not posting all of them, that would be insanity… and boring.

despite what it looks like, it was quite windy and cold

Sarah had asked in the comments how I go about choosing the keepers when I have culled out the technically inferior photographs (unfocused, bad compo, etc.). That’s an excellent question. I think part of what makes a good photographer is knowing what not to show and that requires having artistic standards. I remove my personal emotional attachment to captures and try to be as objective as possible. And I am a pretty hard critic of my own work (and of other people’s work, but I keep those thoughts to myself).

gotta look nice for the ladies

I threw pottery for ten years. When I was first learning to throw, my instructor (an incredibly talented artist) pulled one of his beautiful bowls from the kiln. Stu scrunched his nose at it and threw it in the trash. “What are you doing?!” I exclaimed as I ran to retrieve it from the trash bin. He told me it wasn’t good enough, not up to his standards. “Well, it’s up to mine, I’ll take it – don’t throw it out, Stuuuuuu,” I pleaded. He shook his head, gently took the bowl from my hands, and smashed it on the ground. “If it has my name on it,” he smiled “then it has to be up to snuff.” I thought he was crazy then. I get it now.

To answer Sarah’s question: I don’t delete good or great photos. I keep them in archive. The ones that I show – sometimes less than 1% or up to 10% – are the best ones of the bunch. If I have 5 photos of the exact same thing, then I’m doing something wrong, because that is not how I shoot. Usually I will have a series that varies the depth-of-field, exposure time, focal length, composition, or action. If all is technically solid, then choosing the best one boils down to my artistic judgment. I think a lot of photography enthusiasts overlook the importance of being selective. Loving your photograph is not going to make it any better or any more appealing to an objective viewer.

lots of shenanigans (the top one is tossing dead plant material in the air)

About a month ago, I was breezing through the Boulder Whole Foods store when I stopped at the produce section where they harbor exotic things like prickly pears, passion fruits, and spiky round orange things. What caught my attention was a Buddha’s hand citron. I knew about these because I had seen Todd and Diane post about it on their blog. What I didn’t know was how the fragrance would mesmerize me into purchasing two of them without having the slightest clue what I would do with them.

the hand of flavor

they are reminiscent of some sea critters

**Jump for more butter**

Hey, how was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? Get work done? Sleep in? Enjoy the weather? Learn something new?

I did all of that and more except for the sleeping in part (of course). A few weeks ago, Jason invited me and others along for a photo road trip down to the San Luis Valley to catch the Sandhill Crane migration. As an extra (and boy do I mean extra) bonus, we brought lenses provided by Pro Photo Rental (one of our sponsors for the food photography workshop in June!) like the Nikon 200-400mm f4 and the Nikon 500mm f4. We had similarly intimidating and amazing lenses for the Canon shooters (Stepan and his dad Oleg). So none – NONE – of my fellow photog pals were able to come! That’s really too bad because they missed out on stuff like this:

sunset over the sangre de cristo mountains and the great sand dunes (at base of mountains)

a pair of sandhill cranes squaring off

The trip wasn’t all rainbows and lollipops. It’s work. We woke up at 4:30 am (the guys got up at 5am) to scope out and shoot before morning twilight. We stood in 4°F temperatures for hours waiting for the sun, waiting for the birds, waiting… There is no running around to warm yourself up – you’ll scare all the birds away! I probably sent about 2 dozen flying off prematurely as I took 10 minutes to slowly walk 20 feet in the snow toward my setup point. Did I mention that I can’t operate my camera with gloved fingers and that the bodies and lenses are all metal – in 4°F weather? And then there was the bland Mexican food. Seriously, we weren’t that far from the border with New Mexico, but yeah – something is fundamentally flawed with the Mexican food in Colorado.

jason looks on as the sun lights up the distant mountains

flying to feed in the rye fields at sunrise

**Jump for more butter**