v.7

the very first version of this i fell in love. i knew cucumbers were going to be one of my favorites. but it wasn’t quite right. then we removed some of the curled slices. then we removed some of the round slices. then we varied the thicknesses. then we added some peel but it was too dark. then we removed the peel but it was too bare. then we added a thin pickle-shaped slice angled across the middle. then we scootched a few pieces closer to the center. then it was just a little bit better than v.1. worth it? totally.

cucumber

we’ve always got kiwi

this food series has been a blast and it’s not over yet, but much of the, ahem, low hanging fruit has already been plucked. for the last several days, steve and i have had to work harder to get compositions and images we were happy with. just in case, we have kept a small collection of kiwis set aside, saying to ourselves, “if we need a plan b someday, we always have kiwis.” they are bright and interestingly structured and easy to slice, and you see them all over the internet. today was the day we needed a plan b. and . . . you guessed it . . . we worked endlessly. everybody in the household was recruited to try their hands at composition. we tried organic and geometric designs. we tried slicing them thin and thick. we tried overlapping and setting them beside each other. starting tomorrow, we no longer have kiwi as a backup plan. thank god.

kiwi

young and simple

these were spring garlic cloves from a friend. i tried halving a number of other garlics for this photo, but the older and larger heads ended up looking convoluted and brain-like. eventually i gave up trying to compose them and went with the simplicity and easy geometry of these slender young cloves with their delicate purple segment lines. next up, according to my husband, is aigo boulido, or garlic soup. he’ll have some convincing to do.

garlic

panic

i’m STILL (ba-dum tssss) not thrilled about this image. steve and i tried five or six variations on these two slices of papaya. at some point we had nearly finished sprucing up a version of the photo, and i just looked at it, and all i could feel was panic. it wasn’t right. i couldn’t explain why. i used all my photoshop tricks to make it better, and none of them worked. i tried copying and pasting entire chunks of the photo in order to make it right. it kept fighting me until steve and i decided to take another version of the photo, which is this version, and when i saw it, i knew it was good enough. it wasn’t going to change the world. it wasn’t the best of this fruit series. but it didn’t make me panic.

papaya

pure celebration

this lily caught my eye on the way up my driveway today. i fell immediately in love with her “take me or leave me” attitude, with her open face, and her arms thrown wide. she’s at the end of her life, and is still finding a way to celebrate.

tiger lily (Lilium lancifolium)