Archive for thoughts and musings

Please take a minute and check out my fun new family portraiture website!
It’s cute-overload!  www.heycutiepie.com

The blizzard of 2014 in a few photos.

It is already October! This poor blog is the last thing of all to receive an update in my life. So many fun shoots, awesome sailing afternoons, a few fun girls weekends and surf trips, a bunch of gorgeous weddings, and abundance of adorable kiddos in front of my camera. Not to mention the new site I am on the verge of launching! Thanks for stopping by this poor neglected blog, I think I *might* just get a few photos posted soon!

Here’s one quick snap, taken last week by my friend Philip (on my friend Sarah’s phone!) that sort of sums up a bit of the fun side of this year!  That’s me in the middle, with the red and yellow 8’0, surrounded by some of my super talented triathlete, marathon running, health writing, life coaching, and surf and snowboarding girlfriends!   xoxo

The Noguchi Museum in Queens hosted a member’s night recently, with guided curator-led gallery tours and complimentary gimlets, made with care by Abraham Hawkins, head mixologist at Dutch Kills bar. The moody weather of the night kept many away, but those who ventured out were treated to a quiet museum, a strong and refreshing cocktail, and an overall memorable night.

The East Side Gimlet recipe is as follows (I made this at home with fantastic results!)
1 oz fresh lime juice
3/4 oz simple syrup
1 pinch of fresh mint
2-3 cucumber slices
2 oz gin
Shake vigorously with ice, strain into a champagne coupe.

I’m currently editing a family portrait session with 5 week old Evie as the star of the show! Evie’s parents and big brother Hudson (a ‘puggle’ -pug crossed with beagle!) were sent to me by mutual friends, and they were especially happy to see both my Furry Friends and Cutie Pies sections of the website! As someone who grew up with a lot of pets, I love capturing pet portraits as well as portraits of their human counterparts! More of Evie and her lovely family to come!

While I’m in the middle of editing my most recent portrait session, I’d like to share an image that I took this summer. Adam and his Dad were horsing around, waiting for Mom and Gabrielle to finish getting ready. Here is one of my favorites from that portion of our day together!

The warning sign in college was that this former straight-A honors student was failing.  Failing a class was a first for me, and it was Organic Chemistry that was about to finish me off. In retrospect, it was the best thing that could have happened to me: it forced me to look critically at the science career path I was tumbling down and to acknowledge that my heart just wasn’t in it.

My heart WAS in the fine art department: the photography kids were the coolest, and they just had it going on! Seriously, if I was going to bomb out of school on account of Organic Chemistry, I was gonna indulge my inner Ansel Adams and go for it. I didn’t have much to lose at that point. And in my first class, working on self-portraits (what a brave new world for a science dork!) I was introduced to the work of Francesca Woodman.

I don’t know how much I need to say about her work – it is beautiful, haunting, lovely, scary, amazing, and breathtaking. Her work influenced me greatly and gave my images a language to help me speak. A few weeks ago, I ran up to the Guggenheim on a brief break to view a show of her work that was closing that day. It was a much needed reminder for me to take things back to the poetic, the ephemeral, the wonderful and even the sad. To shoot more black and white film in this age of digital cameras and iphoneography. To slow down, breathe, and rediscover what it is that makes photography so magical.

A few months ago, I collaborated with the very talented Anne Kilcullen, owner of the New York City-based floral design company Blade. Anne and I set out on a very short deadline to create and photograph a modern tablescape for a competition on Brooklyn Bride‘s popular blog. Our submission can be found here, and while we didn’t win, we were thrilled to be one of the top contenders.

Anne and I met early that morning in the floral district to pick out our flowers, and from there went to a home belonging to good friends of mine, to set up & photograph a few table settings. We had the hardest time choosing which tablescape to submit, and the following photos were definitely some of our favorites as well.

It is definitely not all work and no play around here!  When we saw cheap airfare a few months back, Brian and I jumped at the chance to head back down to Tortola with the hope of scoring some waves and visiting with our friends on the ‘No Work Team.’  (One of our friends even has business cards that proclaim him as the president!)

Our timing could not have been better!  We had three days to tune up our arms on smaller waves before a beautiful swell hit, whose progress we could monitor from the comfort of the hammock at our little cottage in Carrot Bay. We surfed four different breaks, including the somewhat elusive Cane Garden Bay right hand point break (perfection!)  While Brian was ripping the set waves, I was sitting at the end of the point, picking off a few end sections for my first ever paddle-out at Cane.

We had eight great days of laughs and BVI rum drinks (the Painkiller was a particular happy hour favorite after a few intense 3-surf-sessions-per-day arm burners!)  While I definitely honor my own limitations as a surfer, I found it easier to push myself into more challenging situations with the comfort of a supportive group of friends cheering and paddling out with me. Big group hug to our friends: Jack, Nancy, Mike, Gail, Maria, JC, Sam, Lily, Noah, Brian O, Jed!

Below is the view from our hammock!

I had a really fun night last night at a small event put on by Uncommon Goods, the quirky Brooklyn-based catalog of unique gifts and clever innovations. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t flipped through their catalog in quite a while, and I was pleasantly surprised at some of the fun items they are featuring (including specifically Tattly temp tattoos, the company started and run by my dear friend Tina Roth Eisenberg, whom many of you know by her blog, swiss-miss.com.)

I was also really impressed by the warmth and participation shown by all of the Uncommon Goods employees that I met. They are a fun, interested, passionate group, and I felt lucky to have met so many of them. The Brooklyn Brewery beers and super tasty snacks helped facilitate the happy hour vibe, and, oh right, the panel discussion on ‘getting paid to be doing what you love’ (I paraphrase), the reason we were all there, was informative and enlightening. Tina was a panelist, joined by Anna Rabinowicz from Rablabs, Jeff Davis from Vinylux, and Nickey Skarstad from Etsy. Dave Bolotsky, the founder and CEO of Uncommon Goods, was the moderator.

Best of all, I got to hang with some friends (Tina! Eli!) and meet some new ones (Allegra, Julia, Jeremiah), and I became the ‘cigarette girl’ of the temp tattoos, going around the room spreading some Tattly love!  (I’m Tattly’s biggest fan, no doubt inspired by the custom ones Tina made for my wedding!)

Are you getting paid to do what you love? Why or why not?
xo