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We went up to Arthur Ave today to get some tasty Italian treats at this famous Pork shop ‘Calabria.’ It’s an easy sell when you have sausages hanging from the ceiling and big plates of salami and cheese samples out.

I ended up buying a whole bunch of fish from another store, which I’ve no idea what I’m going to do with. I’ll keep you posted on that. We missed buying any awesome figurines though.

I met Amanda today in Union Square to grab some groceries for dinner. I’d gone in earlier to shoot a little and try to find a new book by the Dalai Lama and replace an old and cracked Nalgene with what I hope to be a vast improvement, a Klean Kantene. I couldn’t find either one, but I did find Joe Ades’ daughter Ruth Ades Laurent (whose husband’s family runs La Ripaille Restaurant in the West Village) selling his infamous peelers from Switzerland in Union Square. She had his iconic salesman British accent and had almost exactly the same sales pitch… all is well with the world again! (I own one of these peelers and I have to tell you it is the best peeler I’ve ever used)

Then we walked through Whole Foods looking for something nice for dinner and also for one of those water bottles, when I stumbled upon the staff break room. The employee furthest back saw my camera and wanted a picture, and it gave me a chance to document how nice their break rooms are!

…so we planted a Redwood Sequioa tree in our apartment. It may seem illogical, but you could just see it as a measuring device for when we need to own a house with a garden. The plant grows a foot a year, so that gives us plenty of time to get out of Brooklyn!

(shot with a Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Macro Lens – a relatively inexpensive but perfectly functional macro)

I’ve never been very good at word games. Crosswords and word puzzles have always been a problem for me, but I’ve watched my relatives scrabble away for years, so I must’ve picked up something. Grandma is in NY this month and at the ripe old age of 82 she’s making us all feel like linguistic morons. My family are the people to watch for technique in scrabble (even though they use an official scrabble dictionary to gain the upper hand)! If you don’t score over ‘300′ against them, you’re going to lose.

I remember my grandfather telling me that he remembers seeing one of the first computers in England and that it took up a huge room and just calculated simple problems. And now just yesterday I was in K&M deciding whether I should buy a 8GB  Compact Flash card for $70 or a 4GB card for $40. Here’s what a Gigabite used to look like ony 20 years ago compared to a 1GB SD card now!!

(via Crave & ToxicJunction) I love stuff like this because it reminds me that when I’m really wanting the latest technology, that it’s all fleeting and impermanent and if I just wait another year, I’ll be wanting something new and better!

FEBRUARY 24, 2009 – Candle Light Vigil - Prayer service to honor the Tibetans who sacrificed their precious life last year defending the basic rights of the Tibetan people at  Union Square (14th Street & Broadway in Manhattan) Starts at 6pm

FEBRUARY 25, 2009  – Losar – Not a day of protest, but the Tibetan New Year, an extended few day celebration that is a lot of fun traditionally spent drinking ‘chang‘ (or nectar of gods) and playing games.

MARCH 10, 2009 – March 10 Protests – It’s the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama fleeing Tibet and the Lhasa uprising. Rally will begin at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn beginning at 8am. Take A or C subway to High Street, or the 2 or 3 subway to Clark Street.

Seeing as all I’ve been looking at is photography, NotCot posted some of these illustrations that I like (as oppose to some of the blurry, poorly cropped, over exposed and incorrect color temperature pictures I’ve taken). I find that using photographic reference for drawings is much more interesting to me than using it for paintings.

I kind of don’t want one, which means I really do, but can’t even think about affording it, and it would be relatively low on my list of things to buy. I’m also not really a big fan of this whole tilt shift photography thing that is grabbing the market. It seems like a gimmick that’s used to make an average picture interesting. Although I am blown away by tilt shift video! Canon just released two new lenses -  the New TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II and the TS-E 17mm f/4L Tilt-Shift Lenses. The TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II is expected to ship in May for an estimated retail price of $2,199.00 and the TS-E 17mm f/4L is also expected to ship in May for an estimated retail price of $2,499.00!!!

These are both from a few days ago. The first was from Betsey Johnson which was a zoo, and somewhat like going on the big ride at Disney World, every corner produced another line to wait in before you could see the presentation.

This next image is from Organic by John Patrick, where they had a make shift farmers market in the corner and I ate some of the best cheese I’ve ever eaten (Amazingreallive.com)

Mum’s birthday was yesterday, so I got a break from the shooting and editing to eat some awesome food at the Spice Market on 13th and 9th.

I shot 7 presentations yesterday, and a few of them where more like runway shows. The difference is meant to be that a runway show has a catwalk and the models walk out one by one, whereas a presentation is stationary (and much cheaper – which is why there are so many more this year). The Luca Luca presentation at the Plaza hotel wins for most dramatic back drop.

And later in the day they held half the photographers outside Alice and Olivia because Kim Kardashian was in there. So when went back later to shoot the clothes the media slut Paris was striking a pose. I just couldn’t help myself and had to take some shots. She kind of looks like an amputee in this one.