A+B See

The Joy of Quiet

2012-01-03T11:09:00.000-08:00

Pico Iyer, the author, most recently, of "The Man Within My Head", a tribute to the British novelist Graham Greene, had a front page story in Sunday's New York Times Week in Review, entitled The Joy of Quiet. It's a topic we, along with many of our friends, discuss frequently--escaping the constant constant stream of too much information. If you missed the article, we strongly encourage you take a look at it here.

A Casualty of the Christmas Season

2011-12-19T05:46:00.000-08:00

Holiday Kitsch Alert: Sweet and Salty Bark

2011-12-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

The other day, while searching new holiday treats to make with marshmallows and cereal (the possibilities would appear to be infinite), I came across a how-to video that made me cry with joy. Candy sushi. I know, right??? So while I await just the right opportunity to serve candy sushi (a state dinner for the Japanese Prime Minister? Perhaps Kodomo No Hi, or Children's Day on May 5, a Japanese national holiday?), I settled upon a recipe that I had torn from Country Living some time ago. Last night, my friends and I got together for our annual Christmas baking evening, which becomes less and less ambitious each year, and yet, somehow more and more fun.

After several rounds of prosecco and pomegranate seeds, we brought forth the four simple ingredients:

a sleeve of Saltines, 2 sticks of unsalted butter (nod to Paula Deen--I tried to cut that down to 1.5 but it really seems to beg for the 2 whole sticks), 1 cup of light brown sugar, and 1 and 1/3 cups of semisweet morsels.

Trial and error being the best teacher, I went at it again this morning, for my own improvement on the original recipe, which happened to come from country superstar Tricia Yearwood.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a large rimmed cookie sheet with aluminum foil and crushed saltines. [The original recipe calls for them to be kept whole, but I like masking what that salty crunch is coming from.]

2. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and brown sugar together and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and pour over the crackers, trying to cover all the crackers evenly. Put the cookie sheet into over and watch closely (learned that the hard way). Bake for about 5 minutes, or until just bubbly. Turn the oven off.

3. Remove cookie sheet from oven, and scatter chocolate chips evenly over the crackers. Place the cookie sheet back in oven for a few moments, to speed the melting of the chocolate. Remove from oven, and with a butter knife or spatula, spread the chocolate over the whole crackery mess. Place the cookie sheet in the refrigerator for 20 minutes or so, until it's completely cold.

4. Break into pieces. Eat. Yum!

Better Than Black Friday or Cyber Monday

2011-11-28T08:40:00.001-08:00

Our favorite company is Patagonia. They produce the finest outdoor apparel available. Our son, Zander has been field testing products for them since he was 12. Every new item blows us away not only in regard to quality but more so with the expanding company ethic.

In response to today's Cyber Monday and last week's Black Friday, they've created this new campaign called The Common Threads Initiative to highlight the environmental cost of consuming and to encourage us to not buy what we do not need. Reduce, Repair, Reuse and then Recycle is a great mantra to pass on and a simple pledge worth taking.

We Have a Question

2011-11-22T07:06:00.001-08:00

What a failure the so-called Super Committee and all of Congress and the Senate have been to every American.

Why couldn't they do this? We think it's pathetic.

Simon Abranowicz' Why? was done for The Fox Lane High School Auction benefiting The FLHS Art Gallery taking place on December 6 but the connection to yesterday's news was too hard to pass up.

1st Dibs

2011-11-16T12:42:00.001-08:00

Introspective Magazine, the online publication from 1st Dibs just published a lovely profile on Bill written by Susanna Salk. You can read the interview and story here.

The cover features Andrea's photograph done on our honeymoon in Greece in 1989.

Hope For the Future

2011-11-16T04:34:00.001-08:00

Casey Tierney, our friend and the Photo Director of Real Simple magazine sent us this photograph of her daughter, Ella, in her Halloween costume. Ella told people that she was, "Patti Smith, a rocker from the 70s who was very important". We think it's one of the best costumes we've ever seen and confirms, all is well with the youth of today.

The Holidays Are Coming...Two great ideas

2011-11-10T17:44:00.001-08:00

We are always on the lookout for meaningful ways to mark the holiday, and two recent ideas that crossed our desks strike just the right note in the spirit of our times.

The first suggestion came via Jayni Chase, a Bedford neighbor and founder of CEE (Center for Environmental Education who urges us to kick the habit of buying cheaply made and foreign stuff this year, instead keeping holiday gift dollars within the community with things like gift certificates for services such as haircuts, car-detailing, or house-cleaning, tickets to a local theater or dance production, a gift card to a local, non-chain restaurant, or jewelry and other items by a local craftsperson. Jayni says, "Christmas/Hanukkah is now about...encouraging American small businesses to keep plugging away to follow their dreams."

In a similar red, white, and blue vein, Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, no longer content to wait for our government, has teamed up with a group of community lending institutions to provide financing to small businesses that need support in order to grow and hire. With $5 million in seed money from Starbucks and the proceeds from donations and sales of a $5 "Indivisible" bracelet available online and at Starbucks everywhere, Create Jobs for USA will make loans to help create jobs in underserved communities throughout the US.

We like the way Jayni and Howard are thinking!

"In a Blog Eat Blog World, We'd Like to Turn Your Attention To..."

2011-10-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

The Daily Edit on A Photo Editor--Rob Haggart's great blog on photography that we just discovered.

Rob recently featured Bill's recent cover story in Bon Apetit magazine--a magazine that's taking some chances and looking quite beautiful of late thanks to Alex Grossman, Creative Director and Alex Pollack, Director of Photography.

A Photographer's Album

2011-10-21T09:21:00.000-07:00

A week after his lecture in Athens, Bill spoke to the Bedford Historical Society at the magnificent 1787 Courthouse in Bedford Village. The lecture opened the Society's Antiques Weekend which really was the last thing Bill ever thought he'd be approached to open.

Signs announcing the lecture were posted through the village including one which read, 'See the World with William Abranowicz'. It made us think about Shackleton's expeditions and slide presentations by photographers like Frank Hurley which were done in a similar way, so maybe a talk to the Historical Society was not too far fetched as it turned out, it was great fun.

The talk, entitled A Photographer's Album Recollections of Published and Personal Images included a review of over 30 years of images from around the world and benefited the Properties Fund which is used to preserve the historic buildings and landmarks in and around Bedford Village.

Bedford looks as beautiful as it does thanks in great part to the BHS. It's efforts over the last 95 years to preserve our history continues with some great plans for the near future that will combine new technology with this beautiful history.

Special thanks to Peter Michaelis, BHS Board Chair, for his photograph and Lynn Ryan, BHS Exec. Director for organizing the event.

If The Times Says So, It's True

2011-10-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

This morning's New York Times brought us a wonderful story on Eve Ashcraft, the color master we wrote about a few months ago. If you have not seen the story, you can read it here. We've been slowly implementing Eve's recommendations for our house and will be finally done in December. It will be a massive change for us. And watch for Eve's new book The Right Color coming from Artisan next month. It features many of Bill's photographs. Also from Eve this month is a new line of paints from Fine Paints of Europe. We told you about Eve but if it takes the Times to fully convince you...

The photograph is from the Greenwich, Ct. Barn mentioned in the Times pieces. One of Bill's images from a story on James Turrell's installation for German Architectural Digest.

THE WAY HOME / Jeffrey Bilhuber

2011-10-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

The Way Home / Reflections on American Beauty is Jeffrey Bilhuber's new book from Rizzoli featuring Bill's photographs. We think it creates a new vocabulary within publishing's interiors and design category. While there's been a movement to the 'completely unstyled' room, The Way Home maintains an elegance and beauty. It continuously references painting and history and the storytelling of each of the twelve families' home is without domestic fictions or desired lifestyles -- it's truthful, personal, and full of Jeffrey's wit and zeal.

It was an honor to have photographed The Way Home and we wish Jeffrey the absolute best of luck with its success.

That Fabulous Demos Family

2011-10-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

I just returned to my hotel room from a great day at The Athens House of Photography. It's wonderful to see a new venture in Athens. As of today, AHOP gets added to my short list of things to do in this great city. Aurleia and Iason Demos along with Nina Stavropoulos have created something I can only describe as an ICP like exhibition and learning space where photographers including the highly esteemed, John Demos, Constantine Manos, Nikos Economopoulos, Herbert List and George Giorgiouo have been exhibited. Giorgiou is currently part of the MOMA New Photography exhibition in NY but AHOP had him first. The space is 10 months old, is lovely and the plans for the future bode well for the (very much alive) photography community here. It's an honor to have been exhibited and lectured here. I hope to be back to visit again very soon but any visit to Athens will now include AHOP.

Alixandra Fazzina

2011-10-08T03:20:00.000-07:00

I met the photographer Alixandra Fazzina at my Athens Center of Photography opening the other night.

Alix is a photojournalist with a fine art background and one look at her work reflects that. She lives in Islamabad, which immediately struck my suburban New York, news-junkie sensibility--A British woman choosing to live in what to me seems to be one of the most intense cities on earth. Her award winning book, A Million Shillings Escape From Somalia chronicles the exodus of people along the smuggling routes from Somalia to the Arab Peninsula.

Her new project follows children as young as 12 who escaped Afghanistan by themselves for very inhospitable cities like Athens and London. When I think of our 15 year old daughter, it floors me to consider such a plight.

To paraphrase Alfred Stieglitz, I am glad Alixandra Fazzina is out in the world.

Music That Terrified Me When I Was a Child

2011-10-07T01:18:00.000-07:00

Our son, Zander, posted a new show featuring Greek Orthodox Music. He writes:

I distinctly remember the type of sounds you are about to hear from my childhood. Walking down ancient streets at night with my family during the summer, we would hear these alien sounds emanating like ghosts from Greek Orthodox churches, the sound of cantors leading hymns and melodic prayers, propelled by the unearthly acoustics of these sacred structures.

I would tell my parents that I was terrified of this music–but it was not true fear, now that I think of it. It was, in fact, a feeling that I was witnessing something of the supernatural. No human, I thought, could produce these rich, deep tones. Religious music often is designed to have this effect. A feeling of spiritual transmigration through sound.

This mix features recordings new and old, from a variety of sources. The first half of the show is devoted to modern recordings of hymns from various annual feasts, and the second half delves into some more obscure, Byzantine chanting which is sure to inspire in you a similar feeling of awe as I felt when I was a kid.

You can listen to the show here.

In Athens

2011-10-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

Just as I was leaving New York for Athens yesterday, I heard a report on CNN about new, large protests against the Greek government's austerity program--taxis, the metro and airport had been shut down. Thousands of people were in the streets. The announcement, brought chills to me, was I about to board a flight for a hornet's nest?

The announcer said the protests had gotten violent and were the largest seen since the tragic protests of two years ago when 4 people were killed. The continually looping video accompanying the report showed a single scene of protesters shaking a barricade-- hardly violent. Then, the announcer got a local reporter on the phone live from Athens who stated the protests were very large but peaceful marches but that CNN had no doubt gotten a single clip of tensions, called it violence and was showing that clip over and over. I felt anger but thankfully the local reporter called out the network on live TV.

Greeks have been asking me how the world now sees them. Without Athens and its enlightenment, the Arab Spring would not have happened, that the movement Occupy Wall Street would not be happening and that as Louis de Bernieres writes in the introduction to my book, Hellas, "...economic crises come and economic crises go." It can't be soon enough for the Greeks.

Athens Exhibition, Signing and Lecture

2011-10-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

If you are in Athens, the show at the beautiful Athens House of Photography features 25 years of work from Greece. The opening is Thursday, October 6 at 8pm and the show runs through December 4.

Bill will be lecturing and signing copies of The Greek File and Hellas there on Saturday, Oct 8 at 5pm.

If you can't be in Athens, Bill will be lecturing in Bedford NY on Saturday, Oct 15. Details to follow.

912

2011-09-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

Like most, we sat dazed on September 11, 2001. The next day I took this photograph of our children so our friends in Greece could be assured all was fine with us.

We remember that day and all that went with it. We'll never forget.

Hurricane Irene Upstate Devastation

2011-09-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

Margaretville, NY, where we have a home was nearly destroyed during Hurricane Irene. The devastation is beyond words. Homes, farms and businesses are being condemned daily in surrounding upstate communities. Relief and volunteer efforts are underway. We hope you can help.

Local groups offering community support

The Fleischmanns Community Church is accepting donations, canned goods, diapers, wipes, hand sanitizer, bleach, cleaning supplies, and masks for the people to use while they are cleaning. The MARK Project (845 586 3500) is helping to locate temporary housing for displaced families. The Margarettville Fire Hall is serving meals (Call Via Christine DuBois at the Fire Hall during business hours, 586-6288, to volunteer for food preparation and serving). The Shandaken Fire House on Route 28 is taking donations of food, water, coffee, clothes, and other basics. The Belleayre Mountain Ski Center has also been accepting donations of essentials and providing meals and shelter.

Websites

The Catskills Irene Relief Resources website lists emergency relief efforts, including referrals for donations and volunteer opportunities, organized by county. http://irenerelief.forumotion.com/

NOFA-NY (Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York) is working to mobilize groups of volunteers to assist in area farm cleanup and relief efforts. For more information or to volunteer, please contact Lea Kone (email: Lea@nofany.org / phone: 585-271-1979 ext. 502.

Applications for emergency federal disaster funding: http://www.DisasterAssistance.gov or call 1-800-621-FEMA or 1-800-462-7585 (TTY).

The Watershed Post continues coverage of the hurricane and flooding with updates on bridge and road closings and recovery efforts. http://www.watershedpost.com/tags/hurricane-irene

http://markproject.org/flood-relief-and-emergency-repair/

The Blue Osa

2011-05-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

The monkeys, macaws, and other jabbering creatures of the jungle make sure you don't sleep through sunrise over the grey sand beach at the Blue Osa, twenty minutes outside of Puerto Jimenez on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. As the sky lightens to yet another spectacular day at around 5:45am, the Blue Osa, an ecologically conscious yoga and spa sanctuary set on western shore of the Golfo Dulce, is bustling in its own gentle way. People are moving about, preparing a glorious breakfast of fresh starfruit juice (picked from trees on the property), homemade granola, crepes, and eggs, while others are raking the leaves from under the spreading branches of the trees that dot the lawn (even paradise needs a little grooming). Aaron, the resident yogi, is saluting the sun from a spectacular open air studio oriented towards the sea.

Bill and I and our daughter Maxie had the pleasure of a week at this small --Adam Dolle designed--treasure last week, while Bill photographed it along with his long-time collaborator, stylist Peter Frank.

Some of the photographs, like the one here shot as evening and quiet descend over the casita where guests gather for meals and drinks, can be found on the website of Blue Osa

The Birthing / Rising Season

2011-04-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

We don't love the ever present laptop in life, but we do know a great thing when we see it. Recently, Andrea discovered the Nest Cam. We've been watching live images and listening to the sounds of a bald eagle's nest in Decorah, Iowa. It's birthing time for birds of prey in North America and like those dream machines we see in hotel rooms that simulate rain or the sea, the Nest Cam does the same. Raise the sound, set it to full screen and take a step outside.

On a separate but somewhat related note, we recently got an email from Mayami Tatsuta an Art Director from McGarry Bowen that Bill's worked with. Mayumi is organizing an benefit for the earthquake and tsumani victims in Japan. Called Japan:Rising, the event will be at Milk Studios on April 28. You can bid on Bill's photograph Birth of a Saker Falcon at that event. For more information, contact Mayumi.

Watch The Hellas Book Trailer

2011-02-02T13:29:00.000-08:00

We've just posted a trailer to Bill's new book, HELLAS Photographs of Modern Greece. You can view it on YouTube by clicking here.

The book has had feature stories on it in British and Greek Editions of Conde Nast Traveller as well a number of other really positive mentions including House Beautiful (number 1 on their top 10 favorite book list) and Elle Decor.

Coastal Living magazine just published an eight-page feature on the book which you can view by clicking here.

An exhibition of photographs from HELLAS is being planned by the Onassis Foundation for June in New York.

Paris on Two Pairs of Panties

2011-01-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

Arriving at JFK on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 28, was like walking into a living tableau of Rodin's "Gates of Hell." JFK was Purgatory, a writhing mass of puffy brown and black down-coated travelers, sweating as they aggressively wheeled ungainly suitcases through the narrow and irregular passageways between lines. Lines to check in. Lines to drop off bags. Lines to nowhere. You got on a line and then tried to figure out which line you were on. All along the edges, lightweight Coleman cots, scattered as if blown to the boundaries of the great terminal by the wind, strained under the weight of exhausted and storm-stranded travelers prostrate with bags squeezed between their knees or clutched to their chests in the rigor mortis of sleep.   The scene was worthy of Salvador Salgado. Bodies strewn everywhere. Every electrical outlet filled with the chargers of depleted electronics. Garbage piled up well past the containers meant to hold it all. The people behind the counters at Panini Express looked like Red Cross workers after Katrina--pale, withered, exhausted from grilling mozzarella and ham, and filling plastic noodle bowls with hot water for cranky foreigners.

Despite walking into this Terminal of Babel, Maxie and I were in high spirits. We were so happy to be on our way to Paris, after our Monday flight had first been moved to Tuesday morning because of the snow, then back to Monday evening, then cancelled completely. My husband, an experienced traveler, found what may have been the only way to Paris Tuesday, a Royal Air Maroc flight to Casablanca, which would connect with an Air France flight to Paris.

We sat crosslegged on the grimy carpet at the gate, flipping through People Magazine together and passing the IPad back and forth for games of Scrabble. All the while, the electronic sign never wavered from its conviction of a 5:45 departure even as we were finally shuffling aboard at
10:30pm.

Trouble with the baggage, the flight attendant mentions almost as an aside, long after we board, and long before we'd would finally take off.   We sat long and hard on the plane at the gate. By the time we took to the air, we were well asleep, blissfully ignorant that "trouble with the baggage" meant our baggage.

Had they mentioned that much of the flight's luggage never got put aboard, would it have turned out any differently? Could we have done anything about it at that point? Besides, the attempt to locate our single suitcase packed with all the nice things we'd collected to keep us warm AND fashionable in Paris ate up a good part of our long day's stay Wednesday at the airport at Casablanca.

We were so close to our destination. Paris, France is just a 7 hour flight from JFK, and yet by the time we pulled up to the gate at Casablanca, we may as well have been on the way to Thailand or the Maldives.

The international standard for airport employees to address any customer with a problem would appear to be to foist them off on someone else. If you go to the Air Maroc desk, then you are directed--with great authority--to the Air France desk. At the Air France desk, you're dispassionately asked if you have been to see the Air Maroc people. Where you need to be is always the place you are not, and the person you need to see is the one you just came from.   In this way, we the travelers get to meet so many more of the personnel with whom you have cause to meet with on a long
dispiriting holdover.

Our first order of business was to find out about a connecting flight to Paris, as ours had left hours before. Those of us lingering around the one desk that all official employees pointed us towards as our solution begin to realize that with only one employee behind that desk, responding to every inquiry with
"the system is down," loosely translated as "You're out of luck here, sister," it behooves us to seek help elsewhere. We form a mob of angry travelers seeking redress, and a flight to Paris. An officially outfitted young man appears and enthusiastically leads us through an maze worthy of Casablanca at a fast clip. After what we've been through so far, we can't help but be suspicious. Why does he care so much? We wonder if we're being scammed, and if he will demand Dinars to release us.

But he does lead us to a window where ticket agents can help. They're flustered and confused but we push our agenda. The next flight to Paris is sold out, they tell us, as is the one after that, but we can be put on a waiting list. By this point, my optimism was nearing its limits. I tell my daughter how smart it was of us to pack a carry-on valise with pajamas and a change of underwear as it appeared that we'd probably be spending the night in Morocco. I was still imagining with great hope, however, that, as promised, our suitcases would be delivered the next day to our hotel in Paris (the aeronautical version of "the check is in the mail.")

Remarkably, after several hours killing time watching the yards and yards of fabric-clad people shuffling in leather slippers through the airport, several dry
baguette sandwiches and countless rounds of Scrabble later, we learn that we have made it on the flight!   Just to keep it real, however, the first announcement we hear as we reach the gate is that the flight is
delayed. As my friend's mother used to say in lieu of actually laughing at a joke: "That's very funny!"

The plane was well on its way when we woke up. Next stop, Paris.

So, we arrive, but our luggage never does. My daughter is thrilled to have free license to shop. I lay in bed mornings simultaneously chastising myself for yearning for my material possessions while keeping a running list of everything I remember packing. I bought my daughter new things, but each night, I rinse out my undies and bra. Still, we have our boots and coats, toothbrushes, pills and contact lenses, and all of the sights of Paris awaiting us.

At Charles DeGaulle on our way home, we can see that our small valise bulging with the purchases we'd made would be unlikely to squeeze into an overhead bin. We would have to check it, I said, and we dutifully added our bodies onto a line which snaked endlessly through the airport with no discernible forward movement. But travel makes you smarter. My daughter suggested we unstuff the overnight bag, add the bulk to the shopping bags we were each holding, and carry it aboard with us. Smart girl. That's what you can learn from a trip to Paris.

Happy New Year!

2010-12-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

We wish you all the very best for the coming year.

May peace prevail.

Ice on Window, New Hampshire, 2010

Hellas Signing at Rizzoli

2010-12-21T03:29:00.000-08:00

Last week Rizzoli Bookstore on 57th St. in New York hosted a reception and signing for Bill's new book, HELLAS Photographs of Modern Greece. We were thrilled to see scores of old friends and meet many new ones. Additional signings are being planned for Athens and Los Angeles and an exhibition of photographs from the book is slated for New York in the summer of 2011. We'll keep you posted on details as they firm.

Pictured is photographer Sherri O'Connor with a copy of HELLAS. Sherri told us this was the first signed photography book she's ever had.

UPDATE on Pate's Tapes

2010-12-17T04:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we posted that PatesTapes.com, since being launched last month, had gotten over 6,000 hits.

We've just learned that number has jumped to 130,000 hits in more than 80 countries.

Our friend, Sally Schneider noted on The Improvised Life that she thinks it has the best collection of Christmas music she's heard.

Pate's Tapes

2010-12-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

Charles Pates, the Creative Director at Garnet Hill has a fascinating sideline. In 1977 he started making mixed tapes from what sounds like one of the most remarkable collection of vinyl records on the planet. The tapes started to be heard at bars and restaurants but with the digital age, that changed. But now that's changed again. Charles just turned us onto a new site he's launched called PatesTapes.com. He's taken this monumental collection of mixes and uploaded them for your pleasure. Right now there are 10 mixes online but if the response to the site is any indication, he'll be making a lot more available soon. Within the first month of launching, he had nearly 6,000 hits from all over the world and all the music aficionados we've turned onto the site are blown away by it. Check out the site here and keep an eye on it for more releases.

Journey to India with Dominique Browning

2010-12-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

In my new Slow Love Life, one of the most important lessons I have learned is not to defer our dreams for too long. So off we go!

Former House and Garden Editor and author of Slow Love Dominique Browning is going to India, she's invited A+B See readers to go with her and the beneficiary is GoodWeave – a nonprofit working to end child labor in the carpet industry and offer educational opportunities to children in India and Nepal.

You can view the itinerary and specifics by clicking here.

Our Dog Portrait

2010-12-06T17:18:00.000-08:00

We want to share the talents of a local artist who paints lovely oil portraits of dogs in classic, regal poses and settings. We discovered his work through our veterinarian, Dr. Jeff Israel here in Bedford, in whose waiting room hang many of Joseph Bushman's paintings. These old-English inspired jewels are small--about 6 x 8 inches--and come in a simple wood frame. A custom portrait of your dog is $95. Our sweet Reagan, getting on in years, was captured to a tee by Mr. Bushman, from his diffident expression to his particular protrusions, all from a few jpegs we sent via email. You can contact Mr. Bushman by email (jgbushman@aol.com) or by phone at 914-423-4971. Tell him we sent you!

Watching Paint Dry

2010-11-16T20:19:00.000-08:00

The second stage of planning to repaint is to test Eve Ashcraft's color suggestions in place. We bought sample sizes of all 17 options, and painted them on sheets of mason board which had been primed with white.

Now, we can place the colors in their proper rooms throughout the house, and see how they work against the floor color choices and against rooms within the same sightlines. We'll be able to see how the colors look in the light of our house, bright days, dark days and night time. We'll walk through again with Eve, and make our final decisions.

Book Signing at Rizzoli NYC

2010-11-05T18:32:00.000-07:00

The Amazing Woman of Color

2010-11-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

Eve Ashcraft is widely known in the world of architecture and interiors for her remarkable sense of color.

We first met her nearly 15 years ago through our work with Martha Stewart Living. Eve was responsible for the development of the original palettes for Martha's Everyday Paint line--still to us one of the greatest tools for introducing color into everyday living. To this day, we've kept a complete set of the revolutionary sample chips Eve designed, which allow you to pick a color and see an array of colors that work with that choice. We were fortunate to have Eve design the paint plan for our Bedford home when we first moved here in 1996, which I then photographed for Martha Stewart.

Since then, the colors in our house evolved--and away from her cohesive color scheme. A few months ago, after not having seen Eve for some time, our paths crossed again on a shoot. We asked Eve if she'd consider consulting with us again on a big palette change. Lucky for us, she agreed. Eve has worked on major projects with some of the best architects and interior designers of our time, and not only developed paints colors for Martha, but also Benjamin Moore and, come next spring, her own line of paints for the prestigious Fine Paints of Europe. 2011 will also see the release of her first book, "The Right Color" being published by ArtisanBooks. It'll be Eve's year.

Last week, Eve came to our house with her giant color set, an IPhone, IPad, and notepad. We told her our we'd like to change from the black floors we've lived with for 14 years, to a light painted floor. Andrea sums up the vibe we have in mind as "a Swedish beach cottage."

Over the next few weeks, we'll test colors, move swatches and with Eve decide on a final schedule of paints. It'll be the biggest change we've made in the house in a long time and we're really excited about the big bang that this relatively inexpensive effort will give us. We'll share some of the process as we move forward.

Mann Oh Mann

2010-10-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

This month's House Beautiful has a lovely story Bill shot a NYC apartment designed by David Mann. Scot Schy, once again, provided a beautiful layout opening with one of Bill's favorite image from the shoot. Our favorite room in this story is the bedroom perfectly styled by Robert Rufino, the new Interiors Director at Architectural Digest.

You can see the entire story here.

SEBASTIAN!

2010-10-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

Our dear friends, Andree Chalaron and Franck Hoffman along with big sister, Elodie welcomed Sebastian Philip Hoffmann Chalaron to the world yesterday.

Bill's the godfather and could not be more proud. Welcome Sebastian and congratulations Andree, Franck and Elodie!

Visit their blog, Giggle Gumbo

More on Acts of Love

2010-10-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

This following was written to Andrea while she was on a shoot in Santorni, Greece. I was home in Bedford, tending the kids and shooting in the city. In light of an article today in today's New York Times on the disparity in French households, we thought it was a timely note to share.

I'll be asleep when you read this but I wanted to say how appreciative I am of what you do. This house work is somewhat thankless. Especially when you have a career. Ok, making lunch, reading the paper, the dogs, the cat and chickens, and the hawk all need tending. Laundry needs to be done and the beds, maybe not made, but at least, straightened. Dinner needs to be planned, procured, made and then cleaned up. The floor needs to be swept and the sidewalk neatened. The vegetables and hydrangeas need water. Zander's music and Maxie's Spanish homework need to be listened to and a full interrogation given to Simon in hearing him say, "I'm ready for my test". Then the day job. The car needs its tires filled and clutter needs to be removed. There are worries about you traveling that include wanting to protect you and smooth your way.

It's a lot and I have grown a new appreciation of you -- of working mothers. The dogs are badly in need of a long walk. My clients need my attention. There is so much to do with the new book. My cell phone is dying. Did I call my mother? Did I call yours? The broker called. Are the logistics on tomorrow's shoot finalized? When you are here, I like reading the paper until the coffee is gone. I miss you and while I am upset about having to miss the high school homecoming game that Zander came for, I want to be at the airport as you clear customs, to race you home to a very appreciative family that has missed you and needs you here. We are once again made aware of how many acts of love you do each day.

Simpler is Better

2010-10-06T10:54:00.000-07:00

This summer, when we visited our friends in Greece, we brought a load of Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products--a gift that was absolutely loved.

A few months ago, Bill shot the new Mrs. Meyer print campaign which is now running in magazines. The images were shot at one of Andrea's location in Westport, styled by Peter Frank and art directed by Chris Lange at Mono. Mono, in Minneapolis, prides itself on the axiom, 'simpler is better' and one of the great tag lines they wrote for Mrs. Meyer's is, "Nowadays, everyone is earth friendly. Where were there manners before?" Those of you that know us, know what that means to us. We loved working with a company whose mission we believe in and whose stuff we've used for years.

Talk About Intelligent Design

2010-10-01T15:43:00.000-07:00

Baby becomes toddler, toddler becomes boy, boy becomes teenager, teenager becomes young man. Each stage takes us by surprise, each stage thrills us. Talk about intelligent design. Just about the time our child begins to live a life independent of us at college, we are at a stage of life in which to see something more clearly, we have to hold it further away. How appropriate.

Check out our young man's webcast radio show here. Wednesday night's live broadcast is a family event.

Coastal Living Lobster Wars

2010-09-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

We first heard about Matinicus Island, Maine in the New York Times a few years ago. Matinicus was then the site of an ongoing struggle over lobstering in the waters there between mainland and island lobster man. The national press started covering the struggle once gunfire started.

Late last summer, we had the opportunity to travel to (and eat a ton of lobster on) this wildly remote island 20 miles off the coast. Any opportunity to go to Maine is always taken. This time, we were there to photograph on Matinicus' neighbor, Wheaton Island -- the home of painters Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby. You could walk from Matinicus to Wheaton at low tide. The images and story are from this month's Coastal Living and the life Bartlett and Eby have on this big rock is something to see and the influence it has on their work really powerful.

Take a look at this idyllic life click here.

October's Elle Decor

2010-09-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

Bill's got three stories in this month's Elle Decor including the cover image of Ralph and Ricky Lauren's Manhattan apartment. Produced by Design Director Anita Sarsidi, the stories include the Lauren apartment, Frederic Fekkai and Shirin Von Wulffen's home and dizzyingly tall model Hana Soukopova and her husband Drew Aaron's dizzyingly high up, art filled, Mark Cunningham-designed apartment.

You can see the Lauren apartment here, the Robert Couturier designed Fekkai-von Wulffen apartment here and the Soukopova-Aaron home here.

Let's All Be Frank

2010-09-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

Our friend, Peter Frank's home is in the current issue of House Beautiful. Peter is a talented set designer and prop stylist and his is one of our favorite houses--a house that Bill was very excited about photographing and that Andrea is very proud to represent as a location. Peter has great style and can ski like a banshee--something that has endeared him to our kids. Scot Schy did a beautiful layout, Rima Suqi, a great interview and we are very happy to feature it. You can see the entire article here.

If the photographs make you want to see it all for yourself, including all the rooms that wouldn't fit into the layout, you can! The house is one of the six houses on this year's Historic Hudson Old House Tour, which takes place on October 2nd. Tickets available at www.historichudson.org

Exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery

2010-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

One of Bill's portraits of Martha Stewart is now on display at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery through June 2011. You can read the press release from the museum here.

Overhearing Things

2010-07-25T08:14:00.000-07:00

Overheard at a recent Dave Matthews Concert in Camden, NJ:

“I wouldn’t walk barefoot on that.”

“Someone should tell that girl to stand up straight. Bad posture is so unattractive”

“Well, that outfit does NOT enhance her figure.”

“I should have brought my glasses, I’m never gonna see him.”

“I better go to the bathroom one more time before it starts.”

“You need to do some Kegels.”

“Oh, that breeze feels good.”

“Damn. I forgot to bring Advil.”

“I’d get Reynaud’s holding that drink.”

While our fun-loving souls may stop aging at around 21, our corporeal selves continue to move along the timeline of life. While we drank and danced and enjoyed ourselves immensely, these very words came out of the mouths of me and my similarly middle-aged girlfriends. Perhaps you noticed us there. We were the ones in the FitFlops. (I'm fairly sure real 21 year olds don't have extended discussions about the relative merits of various foot callous treatments.)

Summer Begins

2010-06-25T06:48:00.000-07:00

I recently took our daughter, our baby, shopping for summer clothes at Forever 21, which is a hit or miss venture. This particular visit was all hit, and the pile of great stuff at ridiculously low prices kept growing. "OK," I said. "This is more than I planned on. This is going to be your graduation present." Maxie continued to nose around while I was watching the salesman tally our goods at the register. "Happy Graduation," I called to her as I handed him the credit card.

"Is she graduating from college?" he asked.

"No!" I responded as if he were crazy.

"Is she already out of college?" he pressed.

"NO!" I practically shouted. "She's only 16!"

It took a moment to correct myself. "Wait, she's only 13!"

Today, driving home from the beach, a celebration of the first day of summer, I looked back at my girl, just days away from leaving Middle School.

Graduating from college? Hmmm. Guess it's an easy mistake.

Oprah's Psychological Thread

2010-06-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

This post was written several weeks ago but I was asked by the magazine to hold off on it until publication. I just got the issue and the story in which the images appear and still thought the post pertinent.

Last week I was on the road for O The Oprah Magazine.

The shoot in California, a portrait of vegan chef Kyle Evans, was part of what will be a 12 page feature on ways people eat, done in signature O style. As Director of Photography Katie Schad told me, "while the food is important, a clear psychological thread in the images is critical."

Seven hours of shooting at the Stanford Inn, a sampling of Kyle's food including his sublime Sliders, and then home on the red-eye--32 hours of travel, 6 hours of sleep, one hour-long run through fog-shrouded Mendecino Headlands, and 3 exceptional meals. And that was two of the 12 pages in this story.

Thursday I was in Fort Greene, Brooklyn to shoot a couple of hardcore carnivores. This portrait featured a couple who eat only what they hunt (in Montana and Alaska, not Brooklyn!). Friday was at Goodlight Studios for a series of still lifes to round out and complete the story.

I've photographed food for Martha Stewart, Food and Wine, The New York Times and the beloved Gourmet. Many of the stories I did for those publications involved personalities and travel but this story was unique. The editors at O are always focused on visually conveying a literal message in the images they use. A 'concept' or as Katie defined it in this case, 'the psychological thread' is sometimes difficult to visually convey--most magazines just want beautiful images.

On my first commercial shoot for Conran's-Habitat over 20 years ago, I bristled when asked to do something out of my artistic character. I was an artist and this was a commission wasn't it? The Art Director gently pulled me aside. She understood my dilemma but explained that it was my job to deliver the image they needed to sell the product. I learned then and there that while I was hired for my eye, I was also hired to solve their problems while maintaining image integrity. It is a lesson I refer to over and over--making an image that the Art and Photography Directors, client, stylists and I can all be proud of. It's hard work and always surprisingly stressful. There are a lot of eyes and input on a shoot but the eyes I keep on myself are the most critical.

The red-eye flights are no fun. Flying and being away from home and family is awful, but there is a flip side. Kyle Evan's delicious Sliders, runs on the Mendocino Headlands, working with very talented people, and walking away from the shoot with all parties, including myself, pleased. Whenever I question myself after a shooting, I recall that even Horst, the revered master, with whom I worked as an assistant, used to leave a shooting doubting or bemoaning some of the things he did or did not do. That's good company to be in.

Low Impact Entertaining

2010-06-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

Imagine. Forty plus guests for a backyard bbq and only ONE BAG OF TRASH! People, it can be done. Here's how we did it. Ordered paper plates, napkins, bamboo forks, and compostable plastic cups from LetsGoGreen.biz, a site that a friend had worked with for Bedford's Environmental Summit, and found them extremely responsive and accommodating (which should not be unique characteristics for a business, but somehow are!). The napkins were 100% recycled, an attractive unbleached cafe au lait color, and compostable. The bamboo forks were much more attractive than the corn starch plastic-looking ones, and compostable, too. The plates, a nice shade of tan, which looked great against royal blue cloths, and coordinated well with the wooden folding chairs and tiki torches, were biodegradable and compostable. Finally, plastic cups, but not the kind which will float around the Pacific for a thousand years or more, but compostable as well. With the right array of well marked trash cans, one for food scraps and compostables, one for recycleables (the glass and plastic bottles) and one for straight trash, we ended the day with a load of future garden soil, and only one bag of future landfill. Not bad. And a good time was had by all.

First Light

2010-06-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Consciousness comes like the first bird to sing with the earliest light of day. A single thought plays in your mind. You try to disregard it. There are so many comfortable positions in which to sleep, and you try them all, but slumber, at least for this night, is history. That one bird sings insistently, soon to be joined by another, then another and another until there is a full chorus playing outside and inside and you know that the only choice is to get up. Maybe in a few hours, you can lie back down again and resume sleep, but for now, there is joyful work to be done and the body is eager to get at it.

Hours from now, we’re expecting over 60 people here to celebrate the high school graduation of our oldest boy with a backyard barbecue. Our youngest is at a landmark place too, entering high school in the fall. Our middle son will embark on the beginning of his college search as an 11th grader. A particular lyric from Joni Mitchell, who has put to words better than most the collective experiences of life, runs through the mind. It’s from The Circle Game. “We’re captive on a carousel of time. We can’t return we can only look behind from where we came and go round and round and round in the circle game.” It’s the line about dragging “your feet to slow the circles down” that gets us. Would that we could. We know that we can’t. Like the scene in the movie “Parenthood” in which Anne Archer and Steve Martin are caroming through a wild roller coaster ride, gripping tightly the bar before them, their faces at once a shifting blend of terror and exhilaration, we hang on and do our best to enjoy the ride.

Life is passing before us at a seemingly accelerating speed. All the more reason to smell deeply of the roses, or the lilacs or the peonies or the honeysuckle… All the more reason to stop and marvel at that one bird’s beautiful song.

Even the dogs out in the office can feel the energy in the air. They’re howling to be released from their crates. For us, there’s fruit to cut, vases to fill, skewers to thread, drinks to chill, meats to grill, and salad to toss. But for now, a moment to savor the growing chorus of birdsong welcoming the first light.

The Joys of Working at Home

2010-06-18T08:44:00.000-07:00

When you work at home you are your own boss. You make your own hours, you can go to work in your pajamas, you can have your dogs with you all day, you can be there when your kids come home from school. The hours can be crazy--early mornings and late nights. The pajamas til noon can make you feel like an insane person. The barking dogs can drive you mad. The kids think you're just there to make them food and drive them places. But, oh, when you really need it, there's no need to sneak a few minutes of shuteye at a desk out of sight of the boss. You're the boss, and if you need a little snooze, you go and take it, no questions asked. Sweet self-employment.
Sweet summer afternoon

Oh, The Humanities

2010-06-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

While our oldest child, Zander, is off to Bonnarro this week, he's entering Cornell at the end of summer to study liberal arts and the humanities.

Yesterday, David Brooks wrote a piece in the NY Times entitled, History for Dollars.

It opens, "When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting." That's exactly what Bill did straight out of High School -- before transferring to art school.

We think Brooks' piece is worth sharing. When the going gets tough, we encourage the study of the humanities.

You can read Brooks' piece here.

Zander's shadow, above, in a photograph taken at the Temple of Aphaia in Aegina, Greece, 1993.

Our Sleeping Porch

2010-06-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

With the onset of warm weather, we’ve moved our bedroom onto our screen porch. We love how living right off the kitchen simplifies life as though we only needed these two spaces and a bathroom. It’s camping at its most luxurious. We fall asleep listening to the peepers, owls, coyotes and other creatures that inhabit the woods behind our home—a symphony that lulls us on even the most restless nights. We look forward to night time storms for the cool air, sound and light show.

And talk about energy efficient. No need for air conditioning--just a quietly whirring ceiling fan and those sweet cross breezes.

It helps that we're naturally early risers. The the chorus of songbirds that begins at first light can be overwhelming. It softens to gentler tweets as morning comes full on, and by that time, we're up and about our business too.

When the nights start to chill, we’ll add blankets, then a down comforter, and finally an electric blanket. That’ll get us well into November. We will move back inside when we can no longer read at night without our hands freezing.

For now, we’re waiting for the first Screech Owls to arrive—they are willing conversationalists when you know how to talk to them. And sleeping outside has taught us how.

A Perfect Summer's Eve

2010-06-07T11:03:00.000-07:00

A perfect summer's evening--The Saratoga Performing Arts Center to see The Dave Matthews Band. The concert was great and the people watching, perfect!

A Sucker for Kitschy Sweets

2010-06-04T05:29:00.000-07:00

Now that my true nature as a dumpster diver has been revealed, I'll go ahead and make a further admission. I'm a sucker for kitschy sweets. Cotton candy, jelly apples, those orange marshmallow elephant peanuts, pixie stix, wax lips, Brown Bonnets, salt water taffy... I could easily walk away from madeleines, biscotti, flourless chocolate cake--just about any grown-up and sophisticated dessert. But show me a rocky road brownie, a perfect chocolate chip cookie, or anything constructed of Rice Krispies and marshmallows and I am first on line. That's why I've fallen for these cookies I found in some magazine somewhere along the way: Mini Hamburger Cookies.

More about assembling than actual baking, the cast of ingredients is as follows:

As the Hamburger, chocolate cookies (bake 'em tiny, to fit on a Nilla Wafer),
As the Bun, Nilla Wafers, with toasted sesame seeds affixed with a spot of egg wash
As the special sauce or ketchup, orangey or red colored frosting
As the lettuce, green dyed shredded coconut

These cookies are the opposite of organic, and they are surefire crowd pleasers. Like Jiffy Pop Popcorn, they're more fun to make than they are to eat. But, like Lay's Potato Chips, betcha can't have just one.

Now go ahead, build the perfect burger, and serve them at your next BBQ. I'm going to figure out how to do hot dog cookies.

Faux That

2010-06-03T05:13:00.000-07:00

Andrea is a proud dumpster diver. Much of the furnishings in our homes were procured from places other than a store. While we buy plenty, we love the thrill of the find at a tag sale, side of the road pick-up, or thrift store. It's part of our reduce, re-use, recycle philosophy.

On a recent scout to one of her client's homes, the homeowner, artist Constance Olds, pointed to a car filled with all kinds of stuff destined for the thrift store. Andrea peered into the back seat, and spotted a small wooden table. Constance originally purchased it at a thrift store to use as her daughter's drawing table, and had always intended to repaint it herself, but years later still hadn't gotten around to it, and now the daughter was adult sized. Within hours of getting it home, we had it painted.

I love my dumpster diving momma!

No Fraidy Cat, He

2010-05-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Our great friend, the guy who introduced the two of us, and a former student of Bill's, Brian English, told us a remarkable story.

Every day, Brian drives the 101 to his job at the Herb Ritts Foundation in LA. Yesterday he saw a school bus in front of him stalled, with smoke billowing out. Though he could see the bus was on fire and could hear screaming, he did not know there were 23 third graders trapped inside. As most every car continued to pass, Brian stopped, kicked in the door of the bus, grabbed a fire extinguisher and with another passerby got the kids off the bus. No one was injured. We saw a photograph of the burned out vehicle in today's New York Times.

Zander, our oldest son called him, "a champion" and told us, "we really know some great ones but Brian's an awesome one." We bet his kids are proud!

He's also a wonderful photographer having worked as Robert Mapplethorpe's last assistant as well as for Richard Avedon and now for the Ritts Foundation. You can see his work here. His photograph Amos (above) hangs in the entrance to our home.

Vacation Plans

2010-05-18T16:23:00.000-07:00

Our travel plans for Greece are made. A strong dollar will provide us with a bargain this year but there is another reason for going--the economic crisis. In 2001, our Greek friend, Kostis, flew here to be with us after 9/11 and now, it's time for us to make sure we make this journey for his home. It's our way to take a small part in a recovery.

An American ex-pat living in Santorini sent us a video on YouTube which is a call to action to settle this crisis and halt the speculating and hypocrisy. We were impressed by Daniel Cohn-Bendit's brave call to The European Commission and Parliament for real resolve. We hope it's a catalyst for substantive action. To heck with the Tea Party. Give us a German styled Green Party!

To view the video you can click here.

Mother's Day

2010-05-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

Simon, our 16 year old, gave this to Andrea for Mother's Day. What more could a mother want?
Happy Mother's Day.

A Working Marriage

2010-05-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

German Architectural Digest --one of the most beautiful magazines in the world-- just published the first story we've done together in 15 years. Roughly translated as "Close to Poseidon" it's an exclusive feature on the 16,000 Euro per night Perivola's Hideaway in Greece and the result a brainstorm we had about working together.

When Andrea was a Contributing Editor to Martha Stewart Living, we worked on a number of stories--she writing and me photographing. Once our kids were born, she began doing locations and while our freelance careers overlapped, it wasn't until last summer that we decided to try collaborating again. We've planned a series of articles that we hope to continue this summer. It's part of a bigger plan for the coming years as our kids start the moves to college and a return to our creative and collaborative roots.

We're both excited and proud. Seeing the joint byline gave us a nice rush and yesterday we found out that two other publications--one in France and one in Italy-- will also pick up the story.

If you'd like to read the text in English, let us know and we'll happily forward a copy.

Interesting....If True

2010-05-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, we saw a segment on CNN's Reliable Sources. Hosted by Howard Kurtz, Reliable Sources is on after the Sunday morning talk shows. Among other things, it checks on the statements and stats politicians cite to help shore up the arguments they make. Every statistic cited was either debunked or, at the least, could not be verified.

Last week, Cape Wind (the wind farm off Cape Cod and that our family supports) was given the go ahead by the Federal Government. Environmentalists celebrated but one NIMBYist, whose famous family compound faces the Nantucket Sound, called it a "$4 billion boondoggle and giveaway to big industry." We wondered how, with the support of so many environmentalist organizations including the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and NRDC not to mention the editorial boards of all the major newspapers, could that be?

This morning, our friend from Maine, Ben Swan quoted his great uncle, Harrison Tweed (whom we are assured really had that name) who would always say, "Interesting....if true."

Reliable Sources now has us asking questions about figures that get thrown out so trippingly -- particularly when the benefits are clear and that we thought this was the kind of project we, in the environmental movement, were waiting for.

Organic Marriages

2010-04-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

We heard about another marital breakup today. This news seems to be a common feature of our stage of life. To our own surprise, we woke up one metaphorical morning recently to find our marriage a much more complicated thing than we ever thought it could be. We were the "perfect" couple, or so we were frequently told. Maybe that was wishful thinking on someone's part, that there really is such a thing, like unicorns or great white whales. The news would appear to be bleak, according to current figures.

We have come to learn that marriage is not a thing apart from us in which we dwell, but a living entity that demands the same nurturing, tending, and attention that a garden does in order to thrive and produce. Leave a garden untended, and the weeds take over, the flowers go to seed, the lettuce turns bitter. Our marriage is a good one, twenty years in the making, but we just figured out the garden analogy. The friend of ours who just let us know his marriage ended mentioned that he and his partner had become roommates. We'd heard that same line in the movie "Date Night." It's an easy role to fall into. Comfort is a great thing, but it can easily morph into numbness. We've been making the extra effort to tend not only each other, but ourselves, even consulting a professional. It's weeding time.

We're planting our garden and cleaning up from a stormy winter. We're tending things outside and in. We fell in love over 20 years ago for reasons we've recently decided to uncover and bring fully back to life, and even finding new reasons. It's spring.

A New Book

2010-04-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, I came across a photograph I made in Greece of olives on a branch. It wasn't an image that would stand out, but it led me to take a new look at a body of work and gave me an idea for a new book.

I spent the next year editing images from dozens of trips to the country Andrea and I have been traveling to for 25 years. Our kids have been to Greece so often that when they were younger they thought they were Greek.

My first book The Greek File / Images From a Mythic Land was published by Rizzoli in 2001 and sold well, considering it was a personal set of images done in black and white. At the time, publishers told me that the market for a book like The Greek File was miniscule -- despite the fact that the country draws over 11 million tourists a year.

My new book, Hellas Photographs of Modern Greece will be published in Fall 2010 by Hudson Hills Press. The introduction was written by Louis deBernieres, whose books include Captain Corelli's Mandolin and our favorite, Birds Without Wings. It's common in the summer for our family to be buried reading on a quiet beach in the Aegean and usually there's one or two of deBernieres' books among the pile we carry.

Book ideas are something I think about constantly, but most ideas briefly sizzle then fizzle for one reason or another. For Hellas, it wasn't until Joanna Hurley, a book agent and packager, introduced me to David Skolkin, a book designer from Santa Fe, that the project became concrete.

David, Joanna, and Leslie Van Breene from Hudson Hills Press, the publisher, came to Bedford two weeks ago to discuss, review, edit and begin to sequence the images. The advice of all three melded beautifully with my original concept for Hellas.

Watching David pair images on the viewing board in our studio was magical -- it was like watching a musical arranger work with a score. Moving small prints around and reviewing the flow beginning to end over and over for 8 hours was joy for me. deBernieres, without prompting, wrote an introduction about how Greece endured several horrendous decades of world war, civil war, military dictatorships and other crises yet went from a third world country into a proud member of the EU. This was precisely what the book was for me and as deBernieres points out, many of the people I photographed had lived through the tumultuous birth of modern Greece.

All this effort has laid the groundwork for what will be a beautifully produced volume that started with a somewhat inconsequential image but we hope will become a substanative document of a place our whole family loves.

We'll post updates on the progress of the book as well as how you can pre-order a copy along with a one of a series of limited edition print over the next few weeks.

Advice For Parents of HS Juniors

2010-04-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

It’s April. By now, most high school seniors are wearing sweatpants emblazoned with the name of their future alma mater. Juniors are sweating through their first stabs at the SATs or ACTs. Their parents of both are sweating over the thought of paying for all those sweatpants, sweatshirts and tuitions.

We’re happily finished with our first run through the college applications gauntlet. On December 10th, thanks to Early Decision, Zander became a Cornellian, class of 2014.

Here’s a short list of what we learned, and what can help you as you enter this fraught time.

1. You will drive yourselves crazy, no matter how many times people tell you it’s all going
to work out fine. We remember going to sleep obsessing and waking up still swirling. To talk
me down, we’d call friends who had a kid a year ahead of ours. They’d tell us: RELAX!
It all works out in the end. Even a "wrong" decision is remediable. Transfers are fairly common!

2. Start by looking at schools not too far from home just as practice. With every visit, you
and your child learn something about what you'd like and what you'd not like in a school.
You start to trust your response to a place. Places you are sure you won't like can often
surprise you. Places you expect to love, you may not feel anything for.

3. Have your guidance counselor come up a with a list of possibilities based on your
child’s profile. That less subjective list is one you can cross reference against your own
research.

4. Is there a Naviance program that your school subscribes to? It is an amazing search
engine. You answer a long series of questions and it gives you a list of matching schools.
Then you can plot your child on their acceptance graph to see how he/she stacks up. It
shows how other students from your school did in applying to a certain school, and what
kind of profile they had.

5. If the SATs are not a strength for your kid, consider the ACTs with writing. It's an easier
test for many, and most of the schools, including the top ones, accept it interchangeably
now. One of the benefits is you don't have to take a math SAT2, as it works as an
achievement test.

6. One of the things they tell you when you go to the various lectures they give to junior
and senior parents: don't base your judgement of a school on what it was like when you
were in high school. That's a really long time ago!!

7. Decisions made as a junior can be turned over once they’re well into their senior year.
That maturation that happened over the year can yield a whole different set of responses.

8. Every one says it so it must be true, that if your child don't get into a place, he/she didn't
belong there. They end up quickly forgetting that they ever did want to go there, and
embraces the school that chooses him.

9. It's early April. You have until next November to get applications in, and that's for early
decision. Keep moving towards the prize, but don't pressure yourselves to come up with a
definite list yet. It really has to evolve.

10. Early Decision. It pressures you in the Fall, but boy is it nice to be done with the
process by mid December. You also save money by not sending out a million applications!
If you don't get in, you kid can have those other applications ready to go.

On Tour with Hasselblad and RETV

2010-04-11T06:13:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked by Resource TV and Magazine
to demonstrate the newest Hasselblad camera, the H4D-40 and
The Broncolor Scoro lighting system on the NYC leg of their
Stage Three Tour at Milk Studios.
Resource produced a video of the event which
you can view here.

Getting Personal on Shoots

2010-04-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

Personal photographs come from a lot of places.

Most of the images in my new book (Hellas, Photographs of Modern Greece / Hudson Hills Press) came from shoots done over a 15 year period for Conde Nast Traveler. On a commercial or editorial shoot, I'm always looking for photographs to make for myself--to complete or continue a body of portfolios that are often, ongoing, life long projects.

On a shoot I did this week for Ralph Lauren Home, I was fascinated by a crystal skull that Ralph Lauren offers. Natalie Han, the Art Director, John Davison, the Stylist, and I collaborated on a small still life trying to make the skull work but in the end decided to use something else.

It's a great object. Someone on the shoot said it looked like something a wealthy rock star would own. It reminded me of a Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait done shortly before he died as well as still lifes of his and Irving Penn's. It reminded me of a lot of things. After we were done with the photograph we needed to make, I decided to make the skull mine. It might work with a series of images I'm making called Flesh+Bones.

Our Favorite Frame

2010-04-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

We found this frame at a flea market in Paris a few years ago.   It's made of white pine and was unpainted when we bought it. We added a few coats of white high gloss Schreuder Paint -- a paint we first noticed on the doors in Santorini.

A frame should neutralize the surrounding area and highlight the image. The wide face, rounded profile and raised moulding of this frame is a simple design but adds great dimension to a photograph.
We've just gotten a router and miter saw to see if we can build ones in various sizes using this frame as a template.

We've collected frames for years-- loading up the car with finds at yard sales often paying as little as a dollar each. We'll then sand and paint them in a uniformed color and hang them in a salon style. It's a wonderfully inexpensive and beautiful way to display art that we'll talk about soon.

Another Medium

2010-04-06T11:08:00.000-07:00

With three children, we've recorded hours and hours of video over the last 18 years. We only viewed it in bits until Andrea came up with a great idea.

When each of the kids turned 13, she painstakingly edited the best clips from from the many hours compiled. She then took those clips to the daughter of a friend who had editing experience (her dad's a director so she grew up with cameras, sound and editing tools around her).

With the addition of music (one of Andrea's many passions), well-edited sequencing and pacing, the resulting 20 minute DVDs are prized parts of the family history which we now view regularly and the kids continue to be proud of. While it did take a lot of time and commitment to cull the clips, the hours of laughing and tears that came from Andrea as she poured through the tapes was a bonus.

I recently got Apple's I-movie and started shooting video clips with my Leica D-Lux 4. This compact camera fits into my pocket and has allowed me to not only take stills but to record reasonably good quality video. Granted, I'd not use the Leica on a commercial shoot but having this small camera with me allows me to make images I'd otherwise not have gotten.

Last week, on a warm spring evening, Simon and I made a short video out on our lawn. We developed a story extemporaneously and shot ten minutes of video that was edited in a few hours over a weekend on I-movie. You can watch the video called Boy and Bird, here.

I'm shooting video for various reasons--to keep documenting my family and for professional purposes. The successful introduction this week of the I-pad and Conde Nast's committment to producing online editions of several of its titles is proof of a publishing revolution in progress. Wired Magazine and Adobe recently produced a short film about the changing landscape of publishing. It's exciting, eye-opening, and impetus to keep me working with video.

Dominique Browning's Losing it.

2010-03-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

On an interiors shoot, mourning changes and losses in the shelter magazine world is a continuous conversation.

No magazine's loss seems to elicit more emotion than that of House and Garden. In this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine, former H+G editor Dominique Browning wrote a beautiful piece on her life after the publication closed. It's an excerpt from “Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas and Found Happiness,” to be published next month by Atlas & Co.

You can read this great excerpt here.

The Family History

2010-03-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

I've photographed each of our three kids since the first was born 18 years ago. I don't always have a camera in hand and have on more than one occasion had to acknowledge I was sorry to miss photographing a moment but I learned to settle myself by acknowledging that I was glad to, at least, see the moment.

Each year I take take time to continue this series of photographs and when we moved into our house in Bedford nearly 14 years ago, we started hanging the images along the walls between our and the kid's bedrooms. There are images of each of our three children--in equal proportion--uniformly printed, matted and framed. I use a frame by Nielsen Bainbridge called Profile 33 in contrast grey. Because of all the changes in photographic media, there's a wide array of print types. Some are gelatin silver with newer images made on an Epson Stylus 9800 printer on Cranes Silver Rag Museo Fine Art paper. Museo has gelatin silver print qualities and allowing us to match the older prints not only in color but in tone.

While there's numerous ways to display images like this, we love the uniformity along this small hallway. There's a thrill in seeing our history every day and each year the history grows.

The Talented Ripley Swan

2010-02-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

Between Zander's college application process and our normal work and parenting schedule, we disappeared.

Zander got into Cornell Arts + Sciences and his great friend and Pine Island Camp Alum, Rippy, got into Tufts -- both, early decision. Today, The New York Times did a story featuring the talented Rippy Swan's You Tube video application. We have to say, we're not surprised. The Swan's are great people and Pine Island's a remarkable program. We often say that if the world's to be saved it'll come from someone who went to PIC.

Summer Photographs in January

2010-01-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

I still shoot film. Processing the film, making contact sheets, editing, and then scanning and printing is time consuming. We often don't get to see the completed body of work I do during our family summer trips until mid winter. It's a great time of year to work on our ongoing family history--the framed images that line the hallway of our home and cover the 18 years of our kid's lives. I love the speed and ease of digital image making but this slow process is like a wonderful alchemy and the richness of these silver images cannot be matched by pixels. Matting, framing, sequencing, and hanging the images are next and we'll show you how we do that over the next few entries.

New Year's Eve 2009

2010-01-01T14:06:00.000-08:00

HOPE

2009-12-24T08:43:00.000-08:00

Family To Do List

2009-12-23T12:17:00.000-08:00

Simple and sociable things to do around a table in winter that don't involve eating:

Cutting out paper snowflakes in all kinds of colors.
Making orange and clove pomanders in untraditional patterns.
Decoupaging bottles, plates, trays or cigar boxes with cutouts from holiday cards and magazines.
Making bird feeders from pine cones, peanut butter and seed.
Playing games like Boggle, Smartmouth, Scrabble, and Spit.

It's surprising how these basic pleasures can truly engage all ages, and become the high point of a holiday at home.

Simple Homemade Gift No. 2

2009-12-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

A jar, can, or bag of homemade granola with the recipe It's simple to make and always well received.

Our homemade granola recipe can be found here.

Simple Homemade Gift No. 1

2009-12-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

A pretty cork-stoppered bottle filled with a simple vinaigrette. My crowd pleasing recipe came via the chef at a house we stayed at on Mustique while on one of Bill's shoots for the Conde Nast Traveler. She said she got it via the New York Times years ago.
6 TBS (or parts) Olive Oil

3 TBS (or parts) White Vinegar

1 TBS (or part) Sugar

1 TBS (or part) French’s Yellow Mustard

salt and pepper

dried basil

1 or more crushed clove garlic

I include the recipe on a hang-tag, crediting Matilda form Mustique.

2009-12-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

Chappy Chanuka

It’s December 9, and Christmas-mania is upon us. As a mixed-breed family (Andrea Jewish, Bill Catholic), we have forged our own holiday traditions, customizing a meaningful way to celebrate both special times with our family. Now, truth be told, Chanuka, which begins at sunset on December 11th, just can’t compete with Christmas in terms of the decorative possibilities, the music choices, the lights and the pageantry. So, from the beginning, we’ve never tried to equate them. We intentionally set up a low-key, yet ultimately satisfying and meaningful way to celebrate the Jewish holiday of lights.

Early on, we learned that trying to make Chanuka more special by giving gifts all eight nights was a recipe for tears. The holiday became about what they were “getting” that night. Somehow, there was built-in disappointment, as so much rode on that one gift. An unattractive greed seeped in, no matter how carefully we explained to the kids how things were going to work over the course of the eight nights. So, here’s what we began to do, and it gave Chanuka its own shape and specialness, separate and distinct from Christmas.

The primary activity for each night of Chanuka was the lighting of the candles. Each kid had his or her own menorah, whether an old family one or a homemade one. They got to pick out their own candle color scheme, put them in themselves, and most exciting, light them. On the first night of Chanuka, each child got a stack of gifts, big and small, but a nice pile to tear through. And that was it for the gifts.

Aside from the menorahs, the constant for Chanuka every year was a big jar of dreidls that came down from the attic, along with a stack of Chanuka books and videos collected over the years. After that, we had something out of the ordinary planned for each of the other seven nights. One night we’d have a party with each child allowed to invite a friend and their family, with latkes (the smell, oh, the smell), decorations, dreidl, candles, and the exchanging of small gifts (dollar store type stuff). Every year, we’d find some Chanuka-related crafts. (Check the internet, there’s plenty of them!) Another night, we’d have dinner with friends. It didn’t matter if they were Jewish or not; the idea was to share our traditions with others. One night we’d go ice-skating or night sleigh-riding, or to a movie. Another night, we would do some charitable activity, whether it was to provide meals to a homeless shelter, or bring donations to a community center.

Usually, by this point, it was enough for the remaining nights to light candles and eat more latkes. Everyone was happy and sated, and it was, for all, a Happy Chanuka!

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T06:23:00.000-08:00

Chicken

2009-11-19T05:37:00.000-08:00

Our children do not love our chickens like we love our chickens. They don’t share our pleasure in the beauty of these funny fowl. They don’t find the humor in their poultriesque profile the way we do, with their oversized breasts, skinny pale white legs, and ungainly gait (the chickens, not our children). We worry about our hens in the middle of a frigid night. We feel sorry for them when daylight runs short come late October, and think how boring it must be to be so cooped up for so many dark hours. Pity them after a rainy day around the pen, their bright white feathers so bedraggled, sodden, and dark with mud.

When we insist that someone else open their hatch in the morning, we wonder if they greet the chickens with a “Good Morning, Girls!” like we do. Or, at night, if we can compel someone else to go lock them in, do they wish the hens a “Goodnight, ladies?” (Don’t think so) Who else but Bill and I stand rapt as they race down their gangplank, our noses pressed up to the mesh, to study which bits and pieces of freshly dumped compost are considered the choicest morsels? (No one else.) Doesn’t anyone else in the family get that a simple pizza crust, or the soggy remnants of their leftover cereal, or the skins from a peeled apple can brighten the day of a chicken otherwise faced with scratching around the same patch of barren dirt day after day? And, by the way, it is not crazy to bring home a restaurant doggy bag for the chickens. You know the saying: one man’s leftover salad is a chicken’s feast.

Our children generally tolerate our attitude toward the chickens--except when it involves them. The open bucket on the counter in which we collect every crumb and scraping and remnant of food is a frequent source of conflict. “Get it out of here,” Zander commands as he eats his breakfast nearby. “I can smell it, and I don’t want to look at it.” Don’t you care about the chickens? “They are low on my list of priorities right now,” he’ll say. Sure, they’ll eat those delicious eggs everyday, but what are they willing to pay for those eggs? Too little.

These days, our children are pretty useless for closing down the coop after dark. Having recently seen a spate of scary movies and having been introduced to the delicious terror of the Ouija board, they will not set foot out near the coop in the blackness. So it’s me or Bill, unless the kids can be coerced to go as a team, armed with flashlights. We just can’t risk leaving the hatch open over night. The chickens are sitting ducks against those clever creatures of the night, the foxes and raccoons. During the day, should the chickens make a break from their pen, which sometimes happens, it’s as good as serving them on a silver platter to the hawks that find their heads the most delectable part. (These are some of the ways we went from an original flock of 30, down to six.)

People wonder why we keep chickens? “Lawn art,” we’ve always said. They’re beautiful to watch. We’ve never given them names, as it’s just too hard to discern one from the next. But there was once one very special chicken who stood out from the crowd. It was easy. She was the only one left of her crowd; they’d all been eaten somehow. read chicken's full story here.

URGENT ADVICE FOR PARENTS OF TEENS!

2009-11-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

OK. This is not a scam. It doesn’t cost anything. It is not hard. It doesn’t involve extra time. But it works, and it works really fast. Take it from Bill and me. We started this trial last Friday, and by Saturday we saw changes. At first it was directed at one of our children who was being, shall we say, difficult. But it was so effective, it made sense to apply it to all three of our kids, and we wonder: why we didn’t figure this out sooner?

The secret to better relations between parents and teens? Good old fashioned “behavior mod” as psychotherapist Dr. JoAnn Magdoff calls it. We are doing something called “LISTENING” to our kids. We are not offering unasked for opinions, positive or negative. We do not make helpful suggestions. We do not tell them how they can do things better than they’re already doing them. When asked for help in making a choice or a decision, we offer two or three options (all options we’d accept) just like when they were toddlers. Remember, “Do you want to eat apple slices or carrots?” “Do you want to wear your purple fleece or your gray sweater?” “Do you want to take your nap on the bed or the sofa?” We put our kids in control of the decisions they make, while making all outcomes perfectly acceptable ones.

Our kids do not want to hear how we would do something. They do not want to hear that their plan to meet at this one’s house to go to that place makes no sense. They do not want to hear that the lunch bag you put their lunch in is more practical than the one they'd rather carry. Get it? “Sit on your hands,” says Magdoff. “Keep your opinion to yourself.” They will do stupid things. They will make bad choices, yes, and often. They will, however, be much more willing to tell you things, show you things, and even ask what you think if you refrain from telling them how what they’re doing is not the best way, your way, or in any way not good enough.

Our kids are opening up to us more. They're telling us things. They're in a better mood! So what if they don't wear a warm enough jacket today? If they are cold, tomorrow they'll make a better choice--without us even telling them to!

How could we not have been doing this all along?

NOTE: Our kids are definitely not following this blog, so the secret of our technique seems pretty safe. Don’t give it away!

I Travel

2009-11-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

My work involves travel. It used to be constant. That wore thin. Now I'm more careful about how much I travel and for what reasons. Traveling takes a toll on a family and a relationship and even a carefully monitored schedule can create serious problems. For someone like me who goes on location to earn a living, I have come to realize that distance creates distance. No matter what the means and frequency of communication, being gone creates a gulf that can become a rift.

When our first son, Zander, was born, he and Andrea and I moved about as a compact unit. Accompanied by my photo assistant, we'd move from assignment to assignment throughout the Caribbean and Europe, touching back home between trips to throw in a couple of loads before heading back out to the airport with fresh clothes. By the time Zander was 18 months, we figured he'd been on almost 200 flights. Tucked into a backpack with the sheepskin ("Lambie") that was his bed, Zander slept on floors, under tables, and in corners at some of the finest restaurants my work took me to.

When Simon came along, we simply upgraded from a single stroller to a double. Week after week in hotel rooms, eating out, and being part of a photo crew kept us together as a family, even though we weren't home. "We ARE their home," Andrea told her mother who was concerned about the effect on the kids. We always said our kids became what and who they are because of all the places they have been, the cultures they have experienced, and the people they have met along the way.

By the time Maxie came along, Zander was starting school, and the expense of traveling with a group that size was prohibitive. I did not need to major in Economics (which I did before art school) to know that a job should not cost more than you're paid. The closeness we held dearly as a family had to change. I continued to travel but now it was only me and an assistant. After 13 years of doing it all the time, I had a jarring revelation. Zander fit into a backpack only yesterday and is now applying to colleges, his stroller-mate brother is a varsity soccer star, and little Maxie’s wearing makeup and stressing over what to wear to school. Over the years, I made nearly every soccer, lacrosse, or softball game and felt I was as connected as someone as jet lagged as I could be and the living was a good one for us.

I still love to travel but now, when someone asks me what exciting place I’d just come from, I might still be able to say, the Greek Islands or Patagonia, French Polynesia or Monte Carlo, but I most likely will admit that I’ve been trying to stay home. I almost always sense a bit of disappointment but while what I do can seem like a dream job, what I like best and what I miss most is being here every morning as they go to school knowing these mornings will soon end. Then another phase will begin--it'll be Andrea and me back on the road as a unit finishing off the list of all the places we’d love to go or taking on another assignment together.

Our New Halloween

2009-10-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

Halloween once loomed almost bigger than Chanuka or Christmas in our house. For months, the children would mull over their costumes. I insisted on making all costumes, a project which fulfilled the needs of my inner craftsperson, but multiply that by three kids, and I was buried under my Halloween to do list. And one costume was never enough--we needed a costume for school and the parade, and then another for trick or treating.

Years ago, I realized that my kids were just as excited to buy their get-ups at Party City, and put aside my prejudice against flimsy store-bought costumes as irrelevant to their enjoyment of the

holiday. Sometimes I’d get suckered into a too-early trip to the store. The selection would be great, but by Halloween, the costume would have lost its power to thrill, and then there would be a last minute scramble to put together something else. Or, we’d go to the store too late, and our choices would be limited to an M&M outfit or some unrecognizable superhero disguise.

Logistics were always intense. They’d get home from school and help then put themselves together for the parade very quickly. After the parade, we’d down pizza before hitting the Farms,

Bedford’s favorite destination for trick or treating--a neighborhood where houses are reasonably close together. There would be various groups we’d need to meet up with at various times.
Bill and I would stand back from our kids on the stoop gently reminding them to say “trick or

treat” and “thank you” before shuffling them along to the next lit doorstep. As an avid collector of candy as a kid, I was always shocked and disappointed how early they’d give in to cold and fatigue. "How about three more houses?” I’d urge, as if they needed more candy. “No, it’s fine, let’s go home,” they’d say.

Halloween is another mile-marker on the road towards their independence. Joni Mitchell sang, “And the seasons, they go round and round." This year it didn't even occur to me to bring down the big box of spooky decorations. No one asked for them either. My 13 year old daughter planned her costume (Native American) with her friends, went shopping with them, and put it all together without the least bit of my involvement. My middle son drew up a concept of his Halloween look, a Badminton player, with a sketch that could be turned in as an assignment for the Fashion Institute of Technology. My oldest is planning to be a boy from the 20’s with his friends, and he culled his whole look out of pieces from around the house. Not a penny of investment.

No more carrying their plastic pumpkins when they get tired. No more holding their hands as we cross the dark streets of the Farms. No more watching as they sort through their candy, and watching as they carry out extensive trades, Nerds for Laffy Taffy, Sour Patch Kids for Skittles. Tonight, they've all got their own plans. Bill and I are going to the movies.

Snapshots

2009-10-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

While on Santorini, Bill is working and it is just not in my nature to sit back and relax. I have an innate need to “justify my existence,” in the words of an old friend. So for me, relaxation comes from running, taking walks with my camera to scout for my Shoot in Santorini website, checking emails, and perhaps most satisfying, editing photographs of my daughter Maxie's bat mitzvah.

All that done, I sit down have to write. Bill is off helping our friend repair his boat after damage wrought by last night’s wild thunder and lightning storm. The air is cool and breezy, and clouds have blocked in the island in a way we could never imagine possible from the typically blue sky days of August and September on so many trips with our kids.

So many pictures from so many vacations! What do we do with all those snapshots? The beauty of digital photography is the freedom to shoot a lot. The downside is if we trust our albums to an electronic form, with the rate of technological change, that computer, and the files therein, will someday no longer be accessible. A line in the book I just finished (The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby) put it well: “Fragile as it is, paper seems to be the only thing left in the end.” That must be seen as true for our family photographs too. Unless we print them they’ll eventually disappear in a technological black hole. So learn the art of the edit. Delete the bad ones, the redundant ones, and print the rest, through any one of the many on-line processors. (My Publisher is a favorite of ours). That way, they’ll always be there to retell your family history.

(As the holidays approach, Bill is often asked about cameras. He recommends the Canon Powershot G10, at about $400+ dollars. It's neither terribly expensive nor overly elaborate--an excellent buy and in the right hands offers magnificent results. Our son, Zander, made beautiful use of his during his recent semester in Sicily. Take a look at his Sicilian Portfolio here.)

Hiding Away

2009-10-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Being the wife of a photographer, one who has made a good part of his living for many years with travel assignments, has many advantages. Bill’s schedule is flexible, and we have long periods of time with him home. Our walls are covered with his amazing black and white images of our family from all over the world. We’re privy to knowledge about places, both the most affordable and the most exclusive, before most people are. One of the best perks of Bill’s career is getting to visit the kind of destinations that others dream about. We’re at that kind of place right now, which, coincidentally while we’re staying here, has (again) landed on the front cover of November’s Conde Nast Traveler Top 100 Readers’ Choice issue: Perivolas in Oia, Santorini Greece.

The purpose of this current trip was many-fold. It was a chance to get away for our 20^th anniversary. Bill also taught a private workshop, and we continued work on a project that has been underway for four years. From the ruins of an old pumice factory on the island of Thirassia, our friend Costis Psychas has created an elegant private villa, situated in the embrace of a broad cove with the most extraordinary view in the Aegean, 180 degrees of sea and sky and those famed white cliff-side villages of Santorini, a five minute boat ride away. Bill is the first to photograph the house and I will write the story. Perivolas Hideaway becomes available for clients next summer.

These Acts of Love

2009-10-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

A mother’s life can be boiled down to one very simple overriding theme. Our friend Linda once said, “It’s what we do. Mothers move things from here to there.” We move laundry from baskets to washer to dryer and back to basket. We move groceries off shelves, into the cart, onto the belt, back into the cart, into the car, then out of the car. We put them on our shelves and into the refrigerator, so those shelves and that refrigerator can be emptied again, and so begins the cycle again. We move our kids from school to appointments and classes and games and friends’ houses and then we bring them home again. We move piles of stuff from one room to the next, and on the way back, we move other stuff the other direction. Even a trip to the bathroom is an opportunity to multi-task. Change that roll, refill the tissue box, recycle these magazines.

Such is the stuff of a mother’s life. It can feel like such drudgery, and for a time for me, it was. The morning alarm was a cruel jab. Time to get up and make the donuts. The laundry was a personal affront, and god help the kid who was discovered putting clean jeans into the basket rather than refold them. The empty refrigerator felt like rebuke.

But then I came across something that shifted my perspective just a few clicks, and it made all the difference in the world for me. Acts of love. I began to look at the planning of dinner, the packing of lunches, the food shopping and the laundry as acts of love. For me, these words were an incantation. These are ways I show my love for my family. And, what a gift that I'm here to show them my love this way.

Granted, we are self-employed, and work at home many days. Our schedules are flexible. And, ok, we do pay someone to come in every other week to do the work no amount of love could make us happy to do. But this is the stuff of a mother’s life, and with our oldest boy in the throes of college applications, we are fully aware that the days of this full house are numbered. Our nest will be down to four birds next year.

And so, bring on the lunch requests. Get your clothes dirty and grab a fresh towel. We’ll gladly fill the refrigerator with stuff you love and plenty of it for your friends, too. We're happy to drive you to Applebee’s and Connor’s and Brooke's and the eye doctor and for shin guards. Acts of love. Lucky us.

(For those of you who don’t feel the magic, there’s always people like Amanda Salles, with a background in interior design and organization whose business, Wife for a Day, can relieve you of some of the pressure of your to-do list!)

Staying Warm

2009-10-18T10:41:00.001-07:00

When we get home from Greece, we hope it'll still be warm enough to sleep outside. We have a screened porch off the kitchen and from May until November we move our bedroom outside. We've already had some snow, the nights have dipped into the thirties and the heat in the house is on. In past years, getting to November has been a challenge but this year, we added a heated blanket to the bed and making December the goal. A few minutes before going to sleep and heading from the warmth of the kitchen, we turn the blanket on to warm up the bed. Every night for the past few months we've gone to sleep with the hooting of migrating owls--Barred, Screech and the current migrant--the Great Horned. It's the perfect sleep machine and totally energy efficient. In the morning, we dash back inside before sun rise to a warm kitchen.

Keeping the house warm but conserving fuel is an important issue for us. We've learned through years of involvement in environmental organizations and efforts that conservation help can eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Last year at the Bedford Environmental Summit we learned about a device called a fuel economizer and shortly afterwards learned that Stuart and Karina Warshaw, friends of ours in Bedford along with Raymond Raphael, had started a new company called Rauw Energy. Rauw was begun for the best of reasons--they know they can do well by doing good. Their device--the Intellidyne Fuel Economizer will cut heating oil consumption an average of 12-18% and at a cost of $695 (installed) will pay for itself in two years. The RauwLetter they produce also offers tips and insight on affordable conservation solutions and ideas. We installed a fuel economizer on our furnace and expect not only to save money but to help in reducing CO2 emissions and play our part in helping our town reach its goal to cut carbon emissions 20% by the year 2020.

Rauw Energy is offering A+B SEE readers $100 off the purchase of their Fuel Economizer. Simply enter code ABSEE when you checkout.

A Trip Without the Kids

2009-10-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

Next week we'll be going back to Greece. We were there in August as a family. This time, it's just the two of us. I'm teaching a private photography workshop in Santorini and shooting a remarkable new luxury hotel on a neighboring island. Andrea will be scouting new locations. The real reason we're going together is to celebrate our anniversary. Greece was our first big trip as a couple. What a way to mark our 20th.

For weeks, we've been preparing to leave our children and our house for a week. There's a lasagna cooling on the counter, and a huge pot of pea soup simmering on the stove. The freezer is stocked with shrimp and ravioli and Bagel Bites (by request), and the refrigerator and pantry are bursting with breakfast and lunch items. They will not have to scrounge for food, and somewhere they'll know that in or absence, this food is a sign of our love.

We are flying together. We have always flown together, though it's something we've always debated. The risk of parents dying in car crashes is much greater, and you never hear of parents driving separately to parties or the theatre. We look forward to sitting quietly together for ten hours, reading and watching a movie, splitting an Ambien to sleep. We will breathe a sigh of relief upon landing. Whew. Made it. One flight down, three to go.

But all our separation anxieties will not be soothed. Our oldest, Zander, is in the throes of college applications. Some are due while we're gone. Having never gone through this process before, we had no idea what this time of year would mean. (Let's just say we'll be around for all of October when Simon is at this stage two years from now.) Aside from leaving Zander and his college applications, there's the usual gamut of logistics to maneuver in a house with three teens and all these animals: sleepovers, pickups and drop-offs, schedules and coverage, in this case, our beloved and thoroughly competent assistant, Chris, whom the kids adore. Oh yeah, we also have to ensure that our businesses continue to operate in our absence.

A trip away from the kids is sweet and sour, but the need to reconnect with each other on a regular basis is vital. There's never a good time to leave. But, always putting kids first can wreak havoc on a relationship. A couple can become like colleagues in the corporation that runs the household. Not very sexy. Between two freelance people, where business travel is a constant, the phrase "like two ships that pass in the night" takes on all too real meaning. At one point not too long ago, we realized that we had just stopped making out, long lingering kisses like when we first met. So, we're back to kissing, hugging, groping, and it's fun. And sexy. And the kids HATE it. Well, too bad. We were here before you, and that hugging and groping is how they got here. And if they want us together for a long, long time to come, they're going to have to forgive us our hand-holding and long-kisses.

We're going away to be boyfriend and girlfriend for a few days, no distractions. Of course, mostly what we'll talk about is how much we miss our kids, wondering what each of them is doing at that very moment, hoping they didn't forget to bring something to school, and planning when we'll Skype home.

The above 1988 photograph is from The Greek File. We spent part of our honeymoon in this room.

What me blog?

2009-10-14T08:47:00.001-07:00

When it was suggested that I blog, the scowl on my face was quite plain. For Andrea, it seemed natural. For years, she wrote essays about her life that appeared in the New York Times and other national publications, and was a Contributing Editor for Martha Stewart Living in its earliest years.
She's always had people telling her that she should write more--she has no shortage of ideas (or opinions) and people seem interested in hearing from her. Andrea's a hub, constantly communicating with and connecting people. Now with Andrea Raisfeld Locations, she continues to work with magazines, advertising and design agencies, and the world's best photographers, finding locations for shoots in the NY area and in Santorini, Greece, where we have been traveling for 25 years.

I am the quieter one--the visual communicator. For twenty years I've been a Contributing Photographer for Conde Nast Traveler, and in over 25 years, I've worked for nearly every lifestyle and interiors magazine published. My photography has taken me all over the world, and put me in front of some of the most beautiful places and things on earth.

But why blog? Print media is shrinking but the flow of ideas has not slowed. We've spent a lot of time bringing stories to magazines, and seeing the world through an editorial lens. Through our work, we continue to see new things everyday. Andrea and I have built a great life and two homes for our three kids (plus three dogs, cat, numerous chickens and hawk) and we have a storehouse of knowledge to share--not only from our own experience, personal and professional, but from our friends' lives as well.

A+B See is our new way to do that. Read it, share it, and anytime, let us know what you think.

Of note: In the 2003 photo above, Today's Word was incantation