Denver Art Museum Curator for Modern in Denver | Portrait Photography

What an honor to have worked with William Logan, editor of Modern in Denver magazine, to create this portrait of Gwen Chanzit, curator at the Denver Art Museum, for a unique and wonderful feature.

In honor of this summer's Rothko exhibit, Modern in Denver put together a story about what it's like behind the scenes creating an installation of this scale.

The model of the exhibition space complete with scale artwork and exhibit text was a blast for the former architect in me to see!

I can't wait to check out the fruits of everyone's efforts -- both in the summer issue AND the Rothko exhibit!

Raw KALE Salad { Denver Culinary Photographer }

OK, please bear with me for an itty bitty side-trip down a culinary road.

This salad is ridiculous. I love LOVE kale, but I honestly never knew you could eat it raw -- RAW -- until a recent visit to Dr. Andrew Weil's True Food restaurant (which just opened up blocks from me). The waitress was kind enough to share their basic recipe, and I've been playing with it for a few days until reaching this recipe tonight, which tasted like perfection.

I'm absolutely addicted.

Thankfully, it's ridiculously easy to make!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 bunch fresh lacinato KALE
• 1-2 lemons (I use the juice of about 1 1/2)
• olive oil (about 1/4 to 1/2 cup)
• fresh turmeric root (about 1/4 tsp)
• parmegianno regianno
• red pepper flakes
• salt & pepper to taste

METHOD:
1. Chop a whole bunch of fresh, washed kale (I used Lacinato - removed stems, rolled leaves and chopped into very thin strips).
2. In a glass (or if you have a better mixing glass for salad dressing, by all means, use that!), combine equal parts the juice of both lemons and olive oil; minced fresh turmeric root; a dash of red pepper flakes; dash of salt & pepper; and grate in about 1/4 cup of the parmesan.
3. Whisk together dressing and toss over kale to coat.
4. Let stand for about an hour at room temperature. The lemon will soften the kale just enough to be absolutely perfect to eat (while also preserving it's nutritional value which would otherwise be diminished if you cooked it).
5. I added some more parmesan, slivered almonds and a croutons for good measure.

Serves 2 as dinner salads, or 4 if you're making as side salad.

Enjoy!

Experimenting with Optics + Light

When you fire a frame with your camera, you are literally painting that exposure with the light of that scene. This concept  has always fascinated me, and from time to time I like to intentionally play with that concept, pushing that light to create luminous paint strokes, if you will.

For an upcoming photo project I am experimenting with slowing down a fixed exposure in order to capture motion as something moves across an otherwise fixed scene. This can be challenging during bright daylight as the camera will quickly overexpose if the shutter is left open for more than a tiny fraction of a second. In order to compensate for that tendency to overexpose, today I have been playing with different kinds of mesh and filters.

A side effect of the mesh is that it creates lovely, ephemeral and soft bokeh patterns, made more subtle when using a wide aperture. (click on photos to enlarge, and note patterns in the background) 

I kind of love it. 

When you zoom in close on these files they start to look like a painter's brush strokes. 

Optics + light... how fun.