Rainy and snowy day perfect for studio work

Well, today is New Year's Eve...for some of you it is already 2010. Happy New Year to everyone and only good things for the coming year.

In NYC it was wet and snowy and gray. A very good time to just stay in the studio and make some pictures. I am working on a food photography promo and since the studio was empty I took advantage and did some new pics. I even ended up doing a bit of food styling. The rice pilaf is from the new Gordon Ramsey book titled Cooking for Friends. It was delicious. Just needed some salt. The pumpkins I had sitting around the studio from a shoot in October so their expiration date was fast approaching. The mushrooms we bought today at Whole Foods. I could not tell if the shoppers were excited or frantic or a combination of both. Everyone will be able to relax once the holidays are past and winter settles in for the season.

Winter blues (and greens...)

Here are two pics from this week that seem to spell "winter" to me. The first was part of a food shoot for a client. We did a series of cheese pics. One of the shots had so many cheeses...15 varieties for a horizontal spread. But I liked this one little cheese all by itself the best. The light looks very winter to me (winter provided by Profoto strobes because the light left us at 3:30PM).

Then, yesterday morning at the frigid Union Square Farmer's Market I passed this stall selling organic dyed merino wool yarn. Catskill Merino sells both these yarns dyed with a subtle touch and lamb meat. Yesterday afternoon I ran to the studio and went thru the prop house to assemble a little still-life. This is real winter light provided my Mother Nature at 3:15PM on Saturday December 12th---winter doesn't truly arrive in the northern hemisphere until 12:47PM (EST) on Monday December 21st.

Now it is paintings...

Well, the sawdust thing with the surfaces got to me this past weekend when I was working on more surfaces for the prop house( up to I think 60 refinished pieces). Partly my fault since I bought a Ridgid belt sander and had never used one before and it turned out to be a sawdust factory. Sawdust was everywhere and it was a hassle to clean up the studio so I decided to take a break this week and work on some paintings.

Here are three I just did. This is for the prop house but I am now inspired to work on pieces for me.

And almost as great as the process of painting is the fact that I don't have to vacuum up sawdust when I leave the studio.