The sun is out this morning, so we are biking to the farmer’s market in Mar Vista, about a mile and a half away. We went last week for the first time and it was very nice. We got some wonderfully fresh cheeses, some great bread, and amazing produce. I got some chard, fingerling potatoes and great herbs from Maggie’s Farm, a local place with great greens. They had these baskets of pre-mixed greens and I feel in love with this mix, visually.

Maggie's Farm fresh green mix

take photos of them! This is the lemon tree in our backyard after a rain storm. I loved the fresh colors, and the water falling off the fruit. I spent a couple of hours yesterday reorganizing the kitchen. On more step toward knowing where everything is.

lemon tree

Today is Dan’s birthday! So that’s why I decided to pull out a portrait that I took of Dan a couple month’s ago. I was playing with a one light, high contrast shoot—and Dan was posing as a Ghostbuster after a hard night’s work. I love this image because of the emotion in his eyes. I am also including one of the other shots from the session.

I love this face

Bustin' is also hard work

So a lot has changed since that last post. Dan still isn’t wild about veggies, but he is a bit more open after some health issues. The biggest change though is the move to LA for Dan’s new job. This is the second time that we have uprooted for a new opportunity. 14 years ago we came to California from NYC. This time it’s been less traumatic for me, since I was already freelance, and with the advent of social media—twitter, facebook, and hell, blogs—I don’t feel as far away from my friends.

Since the move at the end of December, I have been working on getting the house to feel like it’s a home. And I have been nesting like crazy! There are still some areas of the house/garage that need refining—The kitchen isn’t as organized as I would like, and there are a ton of built ins that might be better utilized. But everything has a place right now, and the house is clean!

The garage has come along way, recently. Eventually, I will have my photo studio set up in there, so I am ready to shoot at any time. When we first moved in, I wasn’t quite sure that would happen. It’s quite a bit smaller than our last garage—but it’s the only place we saw that had one—so plus. We still had a bunch of boxes, a clothes rack and our old kitchen chairs on “my side” of the garage. I did a bit of purging, and installed a wall mounted coat rack for the closet spillovers, and now I can see the strobe light—so to speak. There is still a stack of boxes containing guitar magazines that need to be scanned, but that is a slow process. Dan agreed to release his guitar magazine collection, after I scan all of the music tab and the special articles. I am thrilled cause this will be so much less stuff we need to cart around. I have gotten a lot more sensitive to clutter, and I am really trying to let stuff go—and not bring stuff in to start with.

With this fresh start in a new city, I want to really focus on getting stronger—both in my physical body and in my work/art skills. I want to start taking photos everyday, and really feeling confident and comfortable. I haven’t spend enough time taking photos that “don’t matter”, so that when I was taking can’t miss images, I would be nervous and end up not getting the shot. I realizing that the only way to become the photographer that I want is to take lots and lots of photos. So I am challenging myself to post a new image everyday. So here is the first one, which goes along with a post about moving into a new home and nesting. This was taken after a rare, so they tell me, rain storm in LA. I loved the light and the look of the sky.

Our New House

(This is a real IM exchange with my husband)

Kat: so tonight for dinner, chicken and rice and grilled zucchini

Dan: two out of three ain’t bad. gonna grill on the panini?

Kat: you just have to try it, yep

Dan: has zucchini changed in some major way since the last time I tried it? Because I have never, ever liked zucchini.

Kat: when did you last try it?

Dan: cucumbers, sometimes I have talked myself into them. Zucchini smells bad to me and tastes bad to me. I still don’t even consider zucchini an option

Kat: try a small piece, if you don’t like it I won’t bug you again

Dan: you said that last time

Kat: then I won’t bug you til I forget and bug you

Dan: in Encyclopedia Amrich, zucchini is notable for being what Derek Smalls stuffed down his trousers and little else. “In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable, which means it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, however, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower.” OMG

Kat: it makes great bread

Dan: I am not interested in eating swollen ovaries

Kat: you are such a baby!

Dan: just because I choose to research vegetables to understand them and perhaps make them MORE appealing does not mean I am a baby

Kat: you eat the flesh of animals, but are squemish about veggies

Dan: I recall my parents having fried zucchini and/or italian dishes with zucchini. Because the animals are tasty.  I will try it. Again.

Kat: that’s all I ask

Dan: and perhaps this time we will mark the date so it can be remembered as “the last time you tried this”

Kat: how come you have no memory of what I tell you, but food you remember?

Dan: Because your voice is melodious, and I get wooed by your siren’s call, but zucchini is traumatic and I weep

Kat: If I don’t think it is very tasty I won’t have you try it

Dan: wow, that’s as close to a guarantee. What is it supposed to taste like, besides hot, which is not a flavor but a sensation

Kat: squash

Dan: see, I hate squash smells too. I was actually thinking “well at least it’s not squash” — not kidding

Kat: It’s like a dense buttery cucumber

Dan: but cucumbers are interesting because, like carrots, they are crisp and light, and if you recall you actually got me eating raw carrots.

Kat: true

Dan: I don’t love them but I can eat them now and sometimes even CHOOSE to so we have raw carrots and lettuce….that’s inching its way toward a salad. If I can just get over the tomato issue.
dress it up with garbanzo beans (another Kat victory) and a few sprouts (which you don’t like) and maybe a little feta as a reward for eating a salad in the first place.

Kat: lol

Dan: so why fuck that up by grilling squashesque vegetables? but doesn’t it just make them hot and mushy?

Kat: Cause I like them and everything isn’t about you

Dan: lol—very little is about me but I’m just pointing out that you were on a path to progress, and this is a weird detour. sadly I find no recipes online that contian both the words “zucchini” and “tequila”

Kat: I can dip it in tequila for you

Dan: that’s a waste of good tequila

I have been trying to work with meditation, visualization and setting intention lately. Visualization I came to early in life, both through a wildly fruitful and well encouraged imagination, and through a couple of dance teachers who used visualization to manifest proper posture and movement. It really is amazing how much our mental images, or lack there of can effect you anatomy. Some of the images are so strong, I use them to this day: need to relax or getting a massage—images that you are made of soft, warm dough; want to walk like a ballet dancer—imagine two huge meat hooks hoisting you up under your ribcage, lifting you, but you shoulders are free and loose (avoid the should to ear look, which is never a good idea). I hurt my hip several weeks ago, and it will hurt to walk when I over do it, but if I image myself lifted from my center, not “sitting” in my hips, almost all the pain is gone.

The the beginning of this year, I decided that I was going to move from being a photo dabbler to photographer. I was going to be able to be someone who really knew how to use their camera, used the manual mode most —if not all the time, and got the shot on purpose, not by accident. During the month of February, I took two in person classes, two online classes, and set up 3 shooting days. I even got a set of two “proper” strobe lights off craig’s list. I feel 100% more confident, and know I have a ways to go.

I have also set an intention to fill out the Dangerous Curves rooster, and now have two new wonderful woman working with us—one of the a great trained dancer, which opens great creative doors for me!

Now it’s all about keeping the ball rolling as I enter into another heavier work period, so I don’t let all this progress be lost.

19 years ago today Dan and I transformed from good friends to a couple. It means that we have been together longer that we haven’t. We actually planned our wedding to be on the other side of the year on 9/9. But 3 is a magic number, for us in particular.

After shooting Bryn, I did a short session with my friend and fellow DC dancers, Jean. Her new bangs gave here a very 1930s look, very vampish. I was playing with some dramatic lighting, I love the shadows that highlight her cheek bone on this one.

Jean

When I originally set up this blog, the idea was to force myself to create and post art.  To challenge myself not to spend too much editing my work, being too critical. Now that I am getting seriously into photography, I want to get back to that.  I am going to start trying to take my camera with me more often and take more pictures.  I would like to try and post once a week—more if possible. The first one I want to post, is this photo of Bryn that I took on Wednesday.  I really love the intensity in her eye, while there is a still a softness.  In this photo she strikes me as challenging and wise. I may play around with this photo a bit later—making it black and white, except for the eye—maybe.

Bryn looking