Aperture 1.4 {focused blur}

Speaking of people singing in the street...

I was going through some old files and found a link to an art/film project Mark was a part of last year. It was actually on the front page of the New York Times Theater section which was really cool.

"Last year Rochelle Steiner, the director of the Public Art Fund, which commissions and presents exhibitions in public spaces in New York, encouraged Ms. Friedman to do something for the fund."

Friedman does art films and she decided to film people all over the city preforming in public spaces. You can read about it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/theater/29sing.html?_r=3&oref=slogin

The photograph at the top is my husband Mark! As well as the first person in the soldier's uniform to sing on the street in the video. If you don't see the video just click on the spot where it should be and it will come up. Isn't he cute?

My favorite part of the article and the experiment is the fact that there are so many crazy things going on here on the streets that no one even bats an eye! And in a way that makes me sad, I mean do we as a society have so much going on that we don't even see the other people around us living out their lives? Do we pass by things without seeing their beauty because we have to much to do? Has it become unacceptable to reach out to the people around us and share a strange moment on the street? I wonder a lot about that here in this city. It's so easy to feel alone here while at the same time be surrounded by millions of people...

Ain't nothing like a Brooklyn girl...

   

This is a print my sister made for me! Isn't she an amazing artist? She had my name for Christmas and I asked for an illustration of our family with the Brooklyn Bridge. I love how it turned out.  You can see that my family clearly knows my love for umbrellas. Haha!

We have now been in Brooklyn for one year and, in celebration of the anniversary, I thought that I'd do a list of the top ten things that we love about NYC.

10. The D train...oh D train... you are smelly and dirty but you take us almost everywhere we need to go directly from our home. Your orange and yellow seats, while highly uncomfortable, make me smile. Every time I enter the train it's like starting a good book. There are so many characters to observe and learn about.  I love seeing the story unfold before me.

9. Living in our area is like living out the Sopranos minus the cement shoes. I'm not kidding - there are children in our sons' classes named Frankie Scallioni and Vinnie Franchesco ( the names were slightly changed to protect the innocent but you get what I mean right?) and I help serve them ice-cream on Fridays with a man who literally says bahddah bing bahddah boom after he tells a joke. I love it!

8. JFK- how can you not love the fact that there are so many flights to places all over the world, making it easy to get cheap tickets to almost anywhere?

7. The Taj Mahal- not the real one but the little one around the corner that has the best Indian food ever. And they deliver. I heart NYC and the large amounts of food you can have sent directly to your door.

6.Brooklyn is the boroughwere all the coolest designers live.I mean even Grace from Design Sponge lives here, need I say more? Not that I have met her but I like the idea that someday I might run in to her. I just like saying I'm from Brooklyn. period.

5. Every day is a new adventure. Seriously. I never know when I'm going to walk onto a t.v. or movie set filming around town, or who I'm going to meet next,  There are people singing on the streets, playing instruments, and dancing. You never come home from a grocery store with just food. There is always a good story to tell, too!

4. New Yorkers may seem grim on the outside, but they are really very helpful. I don't think I've ever been on the train with the boys without someone getting up to give them their seats. I like to think it's just because my boys are so adorable but really I know it's because New Yorkers take care of their own.

3. The parks, the bridges, the museums, zoos, the theaters, the concerts - there is always something to do. At the beginning, it was also a negative for me because I'm indecisive and I always felt like I was missing something else I could have been doing, but I've learned to get over that for the most part and just enjoy the moment. 

2. I like the fact that my children are learning about so many different cultures as a part of their daily lives - that it's just a normal thing to see something they have never seen before and it's not scary or frightening - it's just new.  I love that they are learning that, while everyone is different, it's those differences that make us all special! I like that they are learning that it is cool to be yourself and not to conform. That makes me SO happy.

1. I love NYC because it feels so romantic and lovely...most of the time...when it doesn't smell like urine or trash. :) Half of the time I have to give myself a pinch to remember it's all real.

For those of you who were reading my blog a year ago you might remembering me posting about how badly I was struggling here when we first arrived. There are a lot of things about NY that I wasn't prepared for. LOL! It really is a whole different world, but you might also remember that I knew, as it always is, when we have moved somewhere, that one day I would wake up feeling like I was at "home" and I would love it - and for the most part, I do. I was photographing a close friend when she put my feelings about the city better than I could have ever said it, she said, " NYC is great, honestly you can get the highest highs you've ever had and also the lowest lows, of course you can get that anywhere, but in NYC you get that ten times a day. Everything is in extremes."

It really is true, but I'm learning to live with the extremes and I know I'll miss it one day! Happy one year Anniversary to NYC and the Stringhams!

 

Vintage

So, as many of you know I have a thing for old movies...I love them. I remember watching them from the time I was a little girl. Our favorites as children were Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Calamity Jane, and Singing in the Rain. In fact I was pretty much in love with Gene Kelly and Clark Gable as a young teen. Kind of strange I know, seeing as how they were older than my Grandfathers...but I was in love with their young movie selves not how old they would have been at the time.lol. I had a TV in my room in high school and it was pretty much always on Turner Movie Classics or AMC. And as a teen I loved, Funny Face, Sabrina, and pretty much anything with Audrey Hepburn.

In college we had to take a class called experimental lighting. During the course we had to pick one style of lighting and then mimic it to the best of our ability using actual photographs as our only guide. I chose George Hurrell as my inspiration photographer. I think only my professor had any idea who I was talking about but George Hurrell was and is one of my favorite photographers ever. Sometimes in history books he is referred to as Hollywood Hurrell he worked for the studios during the big old Hollywood MGM period. And he photographed all the movie stars. His work is beautiful. So I spent the semester using hot lights and trying to get it right. I posted the photographs once before, right here.

Anyway, now I'm just mumbling. All this was to say that I love old Hollywood and have a folder full of old images that I love and keep to be inspired by. A few weeks ago I came across one of my favorites that had been posted on a few blogs around and it reminded me that I really wanted to use the concept for a photo shoot. It's a photograph of Audrey Hepburn holding and book and...hello an umbrella! It's as if we were meant to be! And after shooting with Naomi the first time I knew she would be great for it. Aside from physical similarities Naomi has this beautiful gracefulness that matches Audrey's too! I wanted to use the old photograph and do a sort of modern take on it. It was really fun and turned out really well I think!

I believe that the original was by Leo Fuchs, (he was amazing too!) a Hollywood photographer in the 50's. I think I'm right?

 

Here it is bigger

 

And here is a different slightly more modern take on it.:)

 

And because apparently I can't do a photoshoot without a jumping photograph here is one more.

We shot tons, so I'll post more soon!

Fly Away...

Most of you know I have a thing for umbrellas. I pretty much haven't seen an umbrella I don't love! So when we moved here last year I decided it would be fun to have a collection of umbrella photographs of everyone who comes to visit. During the time they are with us, we take a picture somewhere in the city. So far I have my sister and family at Coney Island, my Mom and Dad at the Statue of Liberty, Emily and Jacob in Central park, Sarah at Pratt, Kelly in Bryant Park, Eli at Time Square  and Zach and Maurine on the poets walk. I haven't put them up yet but my collection is slowly growing and I think it will be fun once I get enough to hang an entire wall full.
So with that in mind we set up a new photoshoot! Naomi,Sumaya and Carolyn were willing to shoot one more time so we headed out on St. Partricks Day! We must have had the luck of the Irish with us because everything went so smoothly. Here are a few of the shots! We thought it would be fun to have them flying away.

 

 

 

 

Here are a few more that aren't "flying" but were just so beautiful I had to post them too!

 

 

 

Thank you girls!

One of those days...

You know how sometimes you wake up with hope for the day and then everything seems to go wrong? There is nothing more sickening to the stomach than to walk to where your car is parked and find an empty space. In Brooklyn that can only mean three things:

1. You forgot where you parked your car.

2. Your car was towed.

3. Stollen. Gone. Say goodbye to a car that once was, as you will never ever see it again. Unless it's still on the side of the road burned to a crisp by crazy people or you see it driving by with new plates and a new owner.

This is especially not a good thing when you are already running late for a photoshoot you've been planning and are very nervous about because you don't know the models well and you really, really want them to like you.

In our case it was number 2 this morning...much better than number 3.  But still at a towing fee of $695? Not so great! Things turned worse after that but my brilliantly amazing knight in shining armour took a trip all the way to Queens for me and got it back. As well as picking up some balloons for the photoshoot. When I requested their biggest balloons I had no idea what that meant! As it turns out it means bigger than 3 feet in diameter each!

Many of you may know who my sweet model and stylist was from her blog! Naomi was amazingly sweet as well as her friends Sumaya and Carolyn, and they were all willing to reschedule for later in the afternoon. And Sarah, the best friend a girl could have dropped everything to come over and watch the boys for the afternoon so Mark could drive the ballons around and watch for cars while we shot!

It was cold. I was nervous...I haven't been really nervous to shoot someone for a while but when you get a chance to photograph three dancers from Julliard with NYC in the background and all the crazy things that had happened earlier in the day, it just seemed to add up that way. But I need not have been. They were all amazing and generous of spirit and as you can see for yourself beautiful in everyway!

I think it went well but I'll let you decide! Here are three previews!

 

 

 

So the day may have not started off so well. Let's be honest it pretty much sucked by nine am. But it ended in the most amazing way possible. I realized that I am truly blessed to have people in my life, new and old that are willing to support me when the chips are down and that is such a huge amazing thing to discover! Thank you Mark, Sarah, Naomi, Sumaya and Carolyn! You were all blessing in my life today!

The boys...

It's been a long time...a really long time since I've posted any pictures of the boys. It's my Dad's birthday today and he asked me to make a c.d. for him so I decided to go all out and make covers for him with photographs if the boys in their new skinny jeans. Mainly as a joke because my little brother kept saying that they looked like little rockstars in their H&M kids clothes.

They turned out really well...a little too photoshoppy but still good. Plus, I know that I am their Mom but I think that the boys as usual are adorable. One of our friends says that Cole looks like a young Paul Newman in the Sting, but another says James Dean. There is a debate. What do you think? And I love that Grant wanted to wear the aviators...nice.