It's Snowing, It's Snowing!

I woke-up this morning to find a foot and a half of snow on the ground. No surprise really. My friend Rayna warned me of this in an e-mail last night saying, "Call me tomorrow. We should be stuck in the house, with snow coming." Not that I don't trust her, I do, but it was well after midnight when I went to bed and there wasn't so much as a single snowflake to be seen anywhere.

I saw a similar forecast for Wednesday evening and it didn't snow at all. Good thing, too, because I was planning on driving the 18 miles to Manhattan to attend the New York Photogroup Salon, something I used to do monthly but haven't in a long while. I was looking forward to it. Looking forward to reconnecting face-to-face as well as to introducing my friend David Verdini to the group.


The Salon was sure to be interesting (and it was!) with presentations by Rafael Fuchs and Howard Schatz (Howard is one of my all-time favorite photographers). I was also pleased to be able to make a small contribution by identifying the proper video-out adapter for Rafael's Macbook laptop and connecting it to the digital projector.

The Salon, as expected, was as creatively stimulating as I remembered it to be. Largely the effort of Rich Pomerantz as the curator, perhaps with the help of Bill Westheimer who used to tackle that task pretty-much singlehandedly, this is an evening very well spent. It's not often that one can see and discuss the latest work of some of the best contemporary photographers of our time, as well as meet them in-person and engage in a dialog with them about their work or the business or whatever, maybe make a new friend or two. A most valuable investment of an evening once a month.



(the following images were shot in damned-near total darkness at ISO 1600, hence the noise)



I sure am glad I didn't have to drive home in the snow. I was also glad to be home early enough to see the best part of the lunar eclipse with my son, Alex, but I digress.

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Snow images: Canon EOS-5D, 70~200/2.8 Canon Zoom Lens EF L Ultrasonic, ISO 200
Salon images: Leica D-LUX 3, 28~112/2.8~4.9 Leitz DC Vario-Elmarit lens, ISO 1600

(sub)Urban Succulents

Where do I start? Contrast? Jealousy? Parody? Or is it just plain flattery? Honestly, I don't know.

In terms of contrast, well, let's just say that I like Maplewood about as much as I like Chicago. Neither is my home town, but both are appealing. Jealousy? This is interesting. My friend Eliot Crowley out in California has made a series of images he calls Santa Barbara Succulents and they're beautiful. My kind of pictures, really.

Then my other friend, Mark Harmel, also in California, did something very similar. I'm not certain that he's even aware of Eliot's pictures, in fact I don't think the two know each other..... but, again, my kind of pictures!

Flattery? Parody? I want to make pictures like that too, but I don't have a cactus garden handy. I do have a back yard..... well, I call it a back yard but it's really an alley.

I live in the urban part of a New York suburb, right in the center of the village, on the third floor of an apartment building on the main street. I'm, technically, in a leafy burb but in reality I live smack in the middle of an urban jungle. So I have an alley in the back of my building ("where the people congregate in shame") and rather than beautiful plants I have old screens, broken gates, decaying brick, etc, etc.










Even though I'm scenically challenged, I want to make images of succulents too, so I've taken the liberty of reinterpreting the art form with a decidedly ce-ment point of view.
(sub)Urban Succulents.





Urban decay, decrepit structures, peeling paint, dirty floor mats from the restaurant kitchen, discarded ice cubes laced with cigarette butts, too many parked cars, body parts. We've got it all here in Maplewood, and we've got it all stashed in the alley behind my place.
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All above: Canon EOS-5D, 50/2.5 Canon Compact-Macro Lens EF, ISO 100

My Kind Of Town, Chicago Is.....

Being a native New Yorker, the following compliment doesn't come easily for me, but: I love Chicago! I mean, let's face it, I'm from New York, the Big Apple. New York is big time, it's the big Kahuna of cities. New York City is open all night with 24 hour everything. A guy like me can get used to that (in-fact, I have!). But I love Chicago!!

I spent the past weekend in Chicagoland, something I do pretty regularly these days. And this wasn't any old weekend, oh no, it was Super Bowl weekend. And Sunday morning, right after my breakfast phone call, still at Sandy's Restaurant in Highwood, I was predicting (okay, bragging) to the gambling crowd that the NY Giants would win the Super Bowl! Man, they all thought I was nuts!!

Anyway, I had a great weekend!!! Too bad I had to come home.

You see, the more time I spend in Chicago the more I like it! As Sammy Cahn wrote...
"And each time I leave, Chicago is
Tuggin' my sleeve, Chicago is
The Wrigley Building, Chicago is
The Union Stockyard, Chicago is
One town that won't let you down
It's my kind of town"

Of course, each time I leave I seem to exit Chicago differently. That's because Chicago traffic is murder. Chicagoans say that there's really only two seasons, Winter & Construction, and that leads to confusion on the highway. This morning I took I-94 East to I-80 East, another new route.

Getting there was no small feat either. I arrived in the middle of a big snow storm. Maybe not the biggest they've ever seen, but it was big enough to make my life misreable. It dumped eight inches of snow right in the middle of I-294. Hey, for all I know, it didn't snow anywhere else in the vicinity that day, but it made the last twenty minutes a two hour ride! I spent thirteen hours behind the wheel of a twelve hour drive. Clear weather & smooth sailing for eight hundred miles, but as soon as I turned North out of Indiana... bam! Big snow!!

And it didn't let up. It snowed all weekend. It was still snowing last night. You find a taxi in the middle of a Chicago snow storm!

Yeah, but Chicago's great! It's sometimes called America's Second City, but it's really a first class place. Chicago has lots of attractions and a lot that attracts me. And where else can you... what other major city can you go to, and stroll around all day and night, without anyone asking you for money?
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All above: Leica D-LUX 3, 28~112/2.8~4.9 Leitz DC Vario-Elmarit lens, ISO 100