odd salon abandoned (close portraits from far away)

So this was only two weeks ago, pretty far down from my typical 2-6 months to get something posted (if you haven’t seen some pictures you were expecting from me from before, say, a month ago, they’re not happening here; reach out and I might be able to do something). I don’t know why, but I found these really hard to edit. The color in the location is hard, and I threw my hands up on that and went black and white. But I’m also emotionally invested in this event, I suppose, and I want to do a good job.

To that end, I took my hardest-to-use lens, and pitted it against really difficult conditions. It’s a 500mm mirror lens, f/6.3. I was shooting hand held, and it’s a manual focus lens. The focal plane (that is, how much depth of acceptable focus you get) is about 4”, and there’s about a 1/4” difference on the focus ring between 30 and 50 feet. So, about 12 thou, or 1/80th of an inch. I did ok; remember, you’re seeing the good stuff, not the outtakes (there were many). Even so, using that lens forced me to use a very high ISO, which, if I’d been using a lower one, the color may have been more manageable… anyway.

The salon was about abandoned things, from children, given up to an orphanage, to a whole island, in NYC, abandoned to nature. Stops include Paris and Angkor, with way stations at Sati (not a place, but an abandoned funeral practice), and Kepler’s best idea that turned out to not be true. At least two of these pictures I only barely got, because I was too busy paying attention to the talk being given at the time.

If you’re interested in Odd Salon, the Something Weird facebook group has more info on salons, past and future, as well as links to many of the talks that have been recorded.

Names and talk titles taken from the FB page, typos are my own.

Harvey the Wolpertinger in his natural habitat. Annetta, the fearless leader of odd salon. Christina Liu, talking about Ta Keo, Angkor’s Forsaken Temple Reigh Robitaille, the Foundling Tokens talk Sahil Bansal, talking about Kepler (Kepler’s so dreamy, I’ll admit, this is one of the talks I was too busy listening to for good coverage) Stuart Gripman, who curated the evening’s talks. This guy, as far as I can tell, was just on stage to show off his cool Fez. Matthew Nelson talking about The Paris Catacombs Wider shot, in one of maybe three photos I took with the short (40mm) lens I brought. Dhiraj Korwani, talking about Sati, the practice of widow burning, how it came to be, and how it ended. This is, I think, the very end of Danielle Baskin’s North Brother Island talk.

olive oil dinner with @boldfoodco and @fatgoldoliveoil

So, a couple of weeks ago I got the chance to attend a dinner by chef Muffie Fulton, in collaboration with Kathryn Tomajan of Fat Gold. This is not a review; both of the geniuses behind Fat Gold are friends, and besides, I’m not qualified to judge food like this. It was an evening of molecular gastronomy, in which all the things I thought I knew were turned upside down and all the food was surprising and kind of amazing. Liquid Nitrogen! Blow torches! Sous Vide!

I wasn’t super happy with the photos from this evening, to be honest. I wish I had another dozen, and good pictures of every course; I just wasn’t “on” that night. Oh well, at least there are some pictures.

Kathryn explains Fat Gold, and Sophia instagrams. Diners, after the first few courses, got up and moved around, watching the prep for desert. Making the chocolate bits that went into the desert. You mix chocolate, coconut oil, and liquid nitrogen, and stir. to collect, you pour everything through a strainer. All that’s left is the bits of chocolate. Very flashy, and the liquid nitrogen is gone before it gets to the floor. Some of our dining companions. Ice cream making. The liquid nitrogen isn’t just flash in this case; it freezes the cream almost instantly, not allowing the water time to form large crystals. This makes the result as creamy as it can possibly be. Then, in order to separate it from the mixing bowl, heat is applied.

sonoma clouds and sundry

this was a trip that we took up to Sonoma to pick up a club shipment and attend a tasting event where they had all these little bite sized pairings to go with the wine. Lovely food and drink. Pangloss was the name of the place. All the people there are as nice as you might expect from a place who’s owner has enough of a sense of humor and love of Voltaire to name a joint Pangloss.

the clouds that day were bonkers. Just puffy, light things that hung in the air and provided shadows over the landscape for added drama. Not only is Sonoma a nice place to get to, but it’s an enjoyable drive up. The drive back is usually at the same time as 10000000000 other idiots that have also been tasting and drinking all day, so it’s something of a wash. As we left, the colouds sort of built up off to the east and started to close in; we made it home just before the rain started. The last photo, of right before we turned onto San Pablo, was bright, direct sun on the foreground, and ominous, dark clouds just behind. Luckily, it was just rain.

I say “just rain,” but ask me about the rain in brasil sometime. Yowsers.

sophie, tolerating my bullshit again. the wine may have helped.

bookends

This would have been a post of a bunch of photos from the second to last time I went to Odd Salon, but I decided I didn’t like any of them, so here are the first and last pictures I did that night. I think they’re OK.

The whole experiment of posting every day seems to have gone well, and I’m going to try to keep it up. there’s something really nice about just putting the work out there in the world, even if I have no idea who’s looking at it (I took off google analytics a day or so after re-enabling it, because who wants to give them more info). Anyway. I think it’s helping.

Here’s today.