If It's Saturday.....

From 1977 to 1998, twenty one years, I lived (mostly) in the Brooklyn (NYC) neighborhood, Park Slope. I have lots of fond memories of the place, but one of my favorite is shopping in the Farmers' Market located at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. So much variety from so many local farms, and in a city that already has more than its share of variety in foodstuffs, really makes a place livable.

I believe I've previously mentioned that more and more recently I'm into locally grown, organic foods so...

Fast-forward to this past weekend and I'm finally out and about in Chicagoland. If it's Saturday, there must be a farmers' market for me to kick around in, and wouldn't you know it, I found several. There's the Deerfield Farmers' Market, the hometown favorite; The Chicago Botanic Gardens Farmers' Market, in Glencoe, a few miles away; and the farmers' market in Lincoln Park, on the northeast side of Chicago proper (very easy to get to, you can take the "el").

I chose the Lincoln Park location as it also gave me a plethora of additional wandering opportunities, the others will have to wait. Here are a number of things that I saw, in and out of the produce aisle.
--
PS: Thanks to the humans at Google for determining that I'm a real person and lifting my suspension, allowing me to continue blogging here. Would a spammer send a thank-you note? JP
--
All above: Canon EOS-5D, 28~105/3.5~4.5 Canon EF Ultrasonic lens, ISO 400

Dear Abby (more Q & A)

Dear Joe,

One of my potential client has, "a lot of photographers who are willing to shoot for credits but I do not know if you have set rates that you need to fulfill? Please let me know"... Is this is really a negotiation or is the client just trying to lowball me?

Signed "Devalued In Detroit"



Dear Devalued,

I live near Milwaukee Avenue and there's a gas station on the corner which charges $4.199/gallon for regular gasoline. The owner and I haven't yet worked out a deal as to how many magazine photo credits I'll need to show him to get my gasoline, largely because he figures I can show those credits at Whole Foods as well and that would be double-dipping. Nor have we worked out, because I've been too busy driving to count, how many vehicles and pedestrians I pass daily that might see his brand name on my car if I were to give him credit for filling my tank... we just can't seem to establish the value. Until then, I'm having to pay cash.

Conversely, the Whole Foods manager wants to know how many dinner guests I have on a daily basis to whom I might mention that I shop in her store? She also can't figure out how to square that with corporate for their cut of the profitable part of my "mention" of their store during dinner.

I can't figure out how the card reader on the gas pumps or the WF will know I'm shoving magazine pages through the slot, the machines seem to want all the type going one way AND it can only read stuff which is coded on the back with a magnetic stripe. Damn it, none of the clients I work for put magnetic stripes on the reverse of their pages!! They print something called advertising there instead, and the advertisers pay with something called money, which, because I'm a photographer... even though I have 25 years experience... I still haven't gotten the hang of managing because none of my clients wants to pay with that!

It took me only a few days to find my house, it took almost two months of negotiation with Wachovia Mortgage to get them to accept photo credits in lieu of cash to pay the loan, but I'm giving them carbon footprint credits back in exchange for them letting me scan the pages with my credit line and e-mail them PDFs instead of sending checks in the mail (those USPS trucks burn diesel at the rate of a gallon per hour!!) so we've worked that out.

Everyone else seems to be cool as their products already seem to contain their name..... the Ford logo is prominently displayed on my car (5 credits), Levi Strauss has their name on my back pockets and on all the rivets (well, the rivets are kind of small, most need glasses to read them), my computers have those cute little Apples all over and my printer says Epson, the cameras and lenses all say Canon more than once and they give me those cute little green hats to wear. My tool box says Stanley right on top so they're covered and...

Anyway, I saw a really cute bumper sticker on a car in Chicago the other day. It said: "Will work for bandwidth."

Amen!

Joe P

Just One More From The Garden

I'm so into the flower thing now I could just shit!
--
Above: Canon EOS-5D, 50/2.5 Canon Compact-Macro Lens EF, ISO 100

Rainy Days & Mondays Never Bring Me Down

I've been in Chicagoland for about a month now, finally getting settled, unpacked the last box just the other day. People are still asking me why I moved and my stock answer seems to be, "It's not for the weather!" Not for the love of driving, either. Traffic here really sucks.

Yeah, so now that I'm all moved in and ready to go back to work and back to blogging, you'd think I'd have something weighty on my mind, something important to say. Nope!

There are no pressing issues at the moment. Legislation is pending, we've all had our say, just have to wait and see what happens.

I do have some phone calls to make, and I'm going to do that in a little bit, trying to rebuild the business, in Chicago, that I walked away from in New York. But that's too heavy for today, I need some lighter fare.

I know! I've got it!! I can write about the weather!!!

It rained here most of the weekend, yesterday too. The sun's out now, a beautiful crystal clear day with a cloudless sky. But yesterday? Yuck!

They say that every cloud has a silver lining and so it is with Chicago weather. One of the fringe benefits of all that rain is that when it stops, colors pop, everything becomes that much more beautiful.

I joined a friend for dinner last night and was struck by the colors of the flowers in the back yard garden. The textures, the shapes, the patterens, the colors... bright and vibrant..... a garden photographer's dream.


Because it had just rained, everything was wet, too. I didn't need to go searching for a spray bottle. Mother Nature put it all in place for me.

If you recall, the last time I did any back yard photography I was in an urban, fairly gritty setting in Maplewood, New Jersey, one of the most beautiful suburbs of New York City. Yesterday I was in a pretty, serene, suburb-like, back yard in the middle of Chicago, maybe America's second largest city.

You may also recall that the last time I did any back yard shooting I was griping about the inequity of my locale versus that of my friends' Eliot and Mark. Not to continue in a jealous vein, but I think I may well be catching up.


Oh, well, it's just about ten o'clock. I guess it's time I stopped goofing around and got down to the real business of photography: finding new clients and new projects to shoot.

But just as important is always carrying a camera, it's important to shoot pictures every day.

You know what I've been up to.

What did you shoot yesterday?
--
All above: Canon EOS-5D, 50/2.5 Canon Compact-Macro Lens EF, ISO 100