Oh, for a muse of Fire!

...that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention.
                     -Henry V, Act I, Scene I

I finally succeeded in capturing fire on camera.  Did you know, that in order to freeze flame in motion, the exposure has to be 1/500th of a second or higher?  That means that fire flickers more than 500 times a second to create that glorious, glowing motion.

My mom wants to create a screen saver out of the images and display them in a digital frame at night, so she can feel as if she's watching an actual fire.  I am warmed by the compliment.

 These pictures were taken at a friend's. She has a large back yard out in the country, and loves to host bonfires.  We were burning old boxes, plus a couple horrendous romance novels that weren't worth donating to goodwill.  As they burned, the corrugated insides of the cardboard and the spines of the book began to look like glowing spines and bits of bone amongst the logs and ash. 
I found them rather thrilling.

We made light conversation and gazed at the fire as it burned down.  Then we went home and tucked ourselves into bed.

Making faces.

So, Mother's day happened.

I started it by getting up super early (for me) and making strawberry shortcake.  My mother requested I make her a special dessert, rather than buying her flowers or making her a card.

My family rose as late as they could, like recalcitrant souls rising at the sound of the Last Trumpet.  We got ready, packed up inordinate amounts of food, and went to the house of my sister, a brand-spanking-new mother herself.

We talk a good, adult, refined sort of talk for the first half hour or so.  I distinctly remember having a conversation about the sub-dynamics of the Bolshevik revolution.  However, as always, it quickly degenerated into general silliness.

So, we laughed until we spasmed.

Annie, in particular, kept making silly faces.

 

Catherine's however, won.

 

The child shows promise, no?

PS. The first photo is one I took on the drive home.

An Evening Arrangement

The peonies are blooming, sweet and heady.

So I made up an arrangement, and quick photographed it while the light turned from golden to blue. I think I finally got the draping right on an asymmetrical arrangement, so that it looks like a romantic fall, rather than like it has odd bits sticking out at unfortunate angles.

The arrangement reminds me a lot of my grandmother.  These peonies are close cousins to the ones  that formed lush masses in her garden bed.  Then there's the bishopsweed blooms, that are descendants of her bishopsweed plants, which formed a border along one edge of her garden.  The green money plant is also a descendant of her plants, which she grew, harvested and dried.  They form translucent flat seed pods, that she would cluster together and form into wreaths.  Dried bunches of them were always hanging in my grandparent's garage, the door of which was always left open.  I would pick the pods while they were forming on the plant, and carefully pull out the center, leaving a thin oval, with a stem attached.  I would pretend they were monocles, and they would promptly get crushed.

I've been mulling over, again, what is the next step towards achieving my career goals.  I'm a private welter of doubt and turmoil. I wonder, in this world full of talent, rife with beautiful images, if anything I do will ever make a difference.  I have to shake it off and remind myself again, that my work has meaning.  It does make a difference.  It already has.

A New Camera for Moi

I think "moi" is the weirdest looking word ever.  It does sound lovely when said aloud though.

Sooo, anyway, I finally got a camera upgrade.  I have a pact with myself to only buy new equipment when I've truly reached the limits of my old equipment.  I have loved my Canon Rebel these past three years, and know it like I know my favorite t-shirt.  We are that familiar with each other.  However, I got to the point where I knew there were some things that I really wanted in a camera that I just didn't have with my Rebel, like more ISO settings, a flip-out view screen for unusual angles or self portraits, and a larger battery pack.  I also just wanted...more. More value range, more options, more sophistication, more pixels.
So I am now the proud owner of a Canon D60.
I'm so enamored I may just name it.

I've been out shooting something virtually every day since it arrived Saturday.  Here's a few of the images I've captured.

The camera has a setting where I can shoot in black and white.  It's actually capturing a color RAW file, but the image displays in black and white, so that I can see the values it's capturing and how they will look in gray scale.  It's changing how I shoot.  

I never knew how much I like shooting low contrast images.

And It Was Good. Very, very good.

I love cooking, but I don't normally post about food.  It's just not what I want my blog to be about.  However, I've been practicing photographing food.  There's a knack to making food look appetizing on camera that I think, honestly, might make me better at taking portraits of people.
Also, I helped make the most amazing dinner, and I thought I would share with you.

Today, my family and I made pizza on the grill, a first for us.

Today was the first sticky, damp day of the year.  Mom made up a lovely lump of bread dough this afternoon, However, the moist closeness of the air sapped her of all will-power to add more heat to the air by baking said lump of dough.

So, at about 6:30, I decided that I would cook instead.  Mom had some fresh mozzarella she wanted to use up, so I decided that we should have pizza, and that further, it should be grilled.  That way we wouldn't add more heat to the house (our old, cranky oven leaks heat) and Dad and "E" could have fun with Dad's new fire pit.  Plus, it would be an adventure!

So I started roasting a red pepper over one of the burners, and batted my eyelashes at my papa so that he would start a fire for me.  For some reason, he was very easy to convince.  Probably it's because he got to play with fire, and then get tasty things afterward.

Normally, home-made pizza is kind of an arduous process, with all of the chopping and sautee-ing, just to get the ingredients together, and the bread dough to make as well.  However, this time, the pizza's just came together.  It helped a great deal that mom had made the bread dough ahead of time.  I was surprised. Even roasting the red pepper was easier than I remember. I love the taste of roasted red peppers, but I never do it because A. red peppers are expensive and B. the oil from the roasting usually splatters and makes a burnt mess all over the burner.  However today it was easy to clean up after, and was the key ingredient in the pizzas' amazing taste.

I don't have a precise recipe, but the ingredients are as follows:

lump bread dough (enough for 2 pizzas)
1 1/2 c fresh mozzarella
1 1/2 c fresh mozzarella, marinated in pesto
6 oz asiago cheese, finely grated
1 c generic spaghetti sauce, with fresh ground pepper and garlic powder added to taste
1 roasted red pepper, peel removed.
2 tomatos thinly slized (added to one pizza only)
16 oz italian sausage, cooked and crumbled.
grated black pepper to taste

It was such a lovely layering of smells as the sausage cooked and the pepper roasted, with an underlaying of the comforting smell of rising bread.  The sharp smell of garlic powder and black pepper.
Then outside, where the burning wood gradually grew stronger and took over the wet grass and lilly-of-the-valley scents that had been there before.  And then the cooking pizza bubbling away and mixing all the lovely cooking smells together.

For the first pizza, the fire was too hot.  It was the perfect height and shape for hamburgers, which made it cook the pizza bottom far too quickly.  Surprisingly, the coal black bottom didn't ruin the pizza.  Mostly, it just added crunch.

For the second pizza, we knocked the logs apart, letting them turn into a bed of coals, and covered the grill so that the top was cooked more evenly and infused with a wonderful, smoky flavor.
Perfect.

If you have tried this, or want to try this, let me know.  I would love to know how it turns out for you!

First Fruits

A few days back, I took a colander of strawberries out to the back patio. Sometimes photographing food is easy.

PS. they were super good, even the one that looks frozen and unripe.
Happy late spring!