Jewels

I’ve been playing with my images lately and liking the altered versions more than the “as shot” originals. I shot these plums last Sept for Connecticut Magazine and they’re beautiful as is in all their purple majesty but I’m loving the toned versions too.

Here is the original and a couple other versions.

Sometimes on a shoot the preparation shots are the most interesting. This was from a recent travel story where the staff was setting up flowers on the bar. I shot the it later when it was cleaned up and pretty as it was I liked this better. This was in an Inn where everywhere you looked there were beautiful things to photograph inside and out.

The best part of summer is eating outside, sitting on my deck with a nice glass of wine with a friend or family or by myself, corn on the grill, a stack of magazines or just meditating on my trees… I dream of this all winter and although we’ve had a brutally hot summer I’ve enjoyed many evenings sitting in my outside dining room, a gift from someone who enjoys the outdoors and a nice glass of wine as much as I do.

I bought my first Hasselblad 25 years ago and my third about 5 years ago when I added the digital back. They’ve served me well and are a marvel of engineering and design but it’s time to move on, I have a new love now, yes Canon, it’s you. So I sold them all for a tiny fraction of what I paid but I suddenly feel freer and lighter. I’m free of cords and external hard drives hanging off me, free from the ever present tripod and now have the lovely autofocus working for me. It was a huge decision to give up medium format and my beloved square but now that it’s done I’m excited about creating new lighter pictures, and working within a rectangle. So thank you Hasselblad, I will not forget you!

My new Canon makes it so much easier to document daily life, this is my son playing his bass

As a long time Hasselblad shooter I never thought I would be using 35mm again. I picked up some Canon equipment recently and love it. The lenses are beautiful, it’s soo much smaller and easier to handle than my clunky but loved square format. I’m using both formats on jobs right now but can see that with the addition of a few more lenses I may make the complete switch to Canon.

Met my “distant cousin” Julie Bidwell and her family yesterday in West Hartford. Turns out we’ve both known about each other for years, having the same name and me being a photographer and Julie being an anchor on Fox News in NY (Julie Banderas on TV) we both show up on google on a regular basis. I contacted her on Facebook last week and we met at Cosi this afternoon, Julie with her Mom Fabiola, husband Andy & newborn daughter Addison. I was a reluctant convert to FB but without it we would likely never have met. We had a great time talking for a couple hours and discovered that we are related and both included in the Bidwell genealogy Book. It’s great to connect with “new” family members!

continuing daily pics shot with my snap shot camera

This show of Chuck Close photographs is up at Univ of Hartford’s Joselof Gallery until the end of June.
The tonality of the photos is so rich and beautiful, they almost look 3 dimensional.
Daguerreotypes, photogravures, digital prints and tapestries are all used to show the same image in different ways.
The photogravures looked flat to me compared to the digital prints and the tapestries invite you to get really close (NPI)
and see the individual threads making up the whole.
Aperture produced this show that you should see if it travels your way.

I have a thing for bowls and blue so this was a perfect match for me on my bi-annual trip to Ikea in New Haven with my friend Lynne Graves… they came in a smaller size perfect for olives or nuts and this larger size… I bought both…. I love that you can get in and out of Ikea for under $100 bucks with plenty of goodies and even have money left over for their Swedish meatball lunch..

“Wax and Wane #1″

I’m included in a an exhibit featuring work by West Hartford Art League members Frank Federico, Carol Ganick, Lee Goode, Elizabeth Lazaren, and John Rohatsch. The show is at 100 Pearl Gallery in Hartford, CT and will be up until the end of April.

The opening is Wednesday, March 31st from 5:30 – 7:30

While shooting these Ohio Buckeye seed pods… which I collected last fall in my backyard… I realized that the linen background I was shooting them on was a beautiful subject on it’s own…