A California State of Mind

There were many reasons I moved out to California from the East Coast. One of them was for a fresh start. Way back when, my now husband and I decided to pull a Jack Kerouac and get rid of all our worldly possessions( I remember my animator husband cutting up his ties with a paper cutter )buy a cheapo car and drive across the country. All the while thinking that if we fancied it-we could put down roots wherever we saw fit. That is an incredibly freeing thought. We experienced a lot of interesting places, but held out until we hit California. And here we have stayed....  Every now and then we have to hit the road- breathe again- and see the sights. A few weeks ago- as a birthday present- my father flew out from the East coast and took care of my daughter for a weekend while Dana and I took a long needed (albeit mini) road trip. Here are some pics from along the way: Santa Cruz had light and poppiness that felt very William Eggleston, Big Sur had a darkness, a history that sank into your bones.

Found Folios- A Taste of Poetry

It is so gratifying when you are an artist and someone seems to understand your work. I have been lucky enough to have worked with some amazing clients who do "get" it. Recently I was interviewed for a an industry blog called "Found Folios" and although I did provide some of the information for the blog entry, when I read the final piece it was refreshing to see that the interviewer seemed to understand what my work is trying to achieve. Here is what they wrote:

A Taste of Poetry from Leigh Beisch

The visual poetry in photographer Leigh Beisch’s work should come as no surprise: Her mother was a poet.

And let’s be clear, there is poetry here - beautiful verse that turns simple food shots into a songwriter’s notebook or a painter’s canvas: a complete story. Beisch’s award-winning work has been featured in numerous cookbooks and magazines. Her flavorful client list is filled with high-end favorites from Williams-Sonoma to Applebee’s, and every shot in every portfolio is a sonnet, an homage to the edible.

Consider the testimonial on her website from the McDonald’s creative director, praising “the most beautiful McD food I have ever seen!” Believe it: Turning a Big Mac into art is no mean feat.

The work and the awards are nice—the above plum shot won a 2012 PDN Object of Desire award in the Food and Still Life category—but what really fire-roasts Leigh’s creative spirit is the challenge. That’s precisely what she found at the end of 2011, when acclaimed wine blogger Alder Yarrow came knocking.

“He was creating a new series on his blog titled ‘Essences of Wine,’ and he wanted to partner with a photographer to create some imagery that wasn’t so illustrative, but more captured the ‘essence of the essence,’ so to speak,” Leigh says.

As Alder’s writing is “rather poetic,” she aimed for imagery with “a similar sensitivity” and in putting together her shoots she called upon lessons she’d learned from her mother’s verse. “Poetic sensibilities are something I embrace working with,” Leigh notes.

Over a year later, the ongoing collaboration with Alder has proven “very fulfilling,” she adds, “especially when we see the imagery paired with Alder’s prose.”

“Flavor is an abstract idea and has always been a challenge to capture,” Leigh says. “It’s a challenge I love to embrace!”

Toasted, Melted- The Love of Bread and Cheese

There is something about crusty bread and melted cheese that makes the stomach grumble and the mind start to strategize how and when one can satisfy the yearning. When can I escape what I am doing to go make one or better yet- order one from a restaurant who has just the right kind of bread and cheese and the most terrific grill for the job.

Feeling Rather Eggy Today

A quiet moment when the water bubbles gently cradle the egg. That transformative moment before opacity- delicate and disarming.

John Baldessari

I was never a huge fan of Baldessari's until now. I have been looking at art on Artspace.com and reading about the artists. For some reason this format of viewing art is interesting to me. Anyway I like his ideas alot. They are rather Dada-ist- brought up to date (add color!) I think that even in the comercial world we are making art that impacts the public- sometimes on a broader scale than in the fine art world. When I am doing my commercial work I like to bear in mind the ideas behind alot of great art of our time.

Wayfare Magazine includes my photos from Rome in their first printed edition to be sold at Anthropologie.

I am excited to see some of my photos from my trip to Rome in the first printed issue of Wayfare Magazine. When I mentioned to a friend and colleague Peggy Wong that I was taking a trip to Rome, she told me that she wanted to see my photos when I returned, and that she may want to include them in the first printed edition of Wayfare Magazine (a cool new travel mag that turns that category a bit on it's head.)

What was nice about this request was that it wasn't really an assignment. She wanted to see the photos that I would take for myself, she was especially interested in seeing what I shot for my personal series of work entitled "Bodies of Land" which is comprised of out of focus landscapes, or in this case cityscape's.

I also played a lot with Instagram for this trip since I liked the format, the accessibility to capture things at any time and the tones that were rendered with some of the filters. I am usually not a big "effects" photographer, nor do I like a lot of retouching. I liken the filters to using different types of film or printer paper.

Here is the text that accompanies the images in the magazine:

Photographer Leigh Beisch, along with her husband, father, and ten-year-old

daughter, forgo their annual trip to Cape Cod for something a little more mysterious. Here we get a light-filled glimpse into the beauty of a region teeming with old world intrigue.

We decided to rent a small apartment in Trastevere, located on the outskirts of Rome and just south of Vatican City. We booked the apartment for two weeks so we could spend one week as tourists and the next week as locals. While Rome is where scale and extraordinary monuments are on display at every turn, the color and texture of this neighborhood are what captured our hearts. Here we felt like we could experience art, not just see it. The building of our tiny rented apartment had the most amazing rustic front door that was designed to keep out invaders during the medieval period. There was also a stone staircase that was so worn with age that I could imagine a young slave girl carrying water up them thousands of years ago. Staying here instead of a hotel allowed us to let the language of the place—the people, the light, the smells—to seep in and shape our experience. The family and I enjoyed being part of the neighborhood’s everyday routines, sampling from the well-visited osterias and trattorias; shopping at the local designer clothing boutiques; and enjoying the famous Sunday flea market, Porta Portese. One place we frequented was local trattoria La Scala, where my daughter would order her favorite dish of spaghetti con burro e parmigiano, a simple dish of pasta with butter and parmigiano. One of my favorite dishes here was the tagliolini cacio e pepe con fioridi zucca e pachino, a pasta with a beautiful squash blossom layered on top, then sprinkled with parmesan and ground pepper.

SEE. I spent some time shooting for my personal work

entitled “Bodies of Land,” which is a series of abstract

landscapes that are out of focus with the subject matter

being light and color. This allows me to create a more

timeless landscape that captures the imagination.

EAT. My father and I woke up early a few mornings

to photograph. Before we headed out, we stopped

at the local Bar for morning cappuccinos and jam

filled pastries. I loved the colorful trays here

Our first morning in Rome, we headed to the Piazza di Santa Maria, where we found a beautiful fountain guarding the entrance to the Basilica of Our Lady, or Basilica di Santa Maria, one of the most ancient churches in Rome. So ancient, in fact, that it’s one of the few churches where you can see Christ depicted as a living prophet, rather than on the cross. It was here that I noticed the light streaming in through the clerestory, illuminating select statues and giving the sense of divine light. This light shaped my experience in Rome, becoming my subject matter and focal point of the trip. The photo of the portal looking out onto the wall with a row of dotted trees was at the entrance to Hadrian’s Villa, a Roman Emperor of the 2nd century AD. The wall pictured here was built to be just one mile long, which was the length of the palace and, according to our guide, the distance that the Emperor’s physician had advised him to walk every day. The morning light of this photo gives us a glimpse into what one of the Emperor’s walks might have been like. From the cobblestone streets and terracotta and maize buildings cast in deep wine hues to street windows dotted with laundry lines, Rome was richer than I had ever imagined. I loved the color of the place, and the way the light would fill ancient crevices to reveal some things and hide others. It felt as though this light held the secrets of Rome.

New Year's Resolution

Steve Jobs said "you have to work hard to get your thinking clean and make it simple."

This quote is from a book that I am reading entitled "Antifragile-Things That Gain from Disorder." The author, Nicholas Taleb uses this quote from Jobs as a way of supporting his theory that we need to get back to a more "simple and natural" system, and away from the manufactured, over predicted one that we have. He argues that the more we try to predict things, trying to control their outcome by manufacturing reality, the more fragile we become. And when the unpredictable occurs (and it always does) those systems that are fragile will not survive. He is a proponent of the "Antifragile" as he puts it- a system that doesn't try to predict, but is prepared to not just survive any shock that comes along (anything from a financial crisis to an earthquake), but actually gains strength from it. He states that Nature is Antifragile- it has weathered so many assaults and shocks and still persists. He proposes to let the simple and natural take their course. I have always been an advocate of the simple and natural. Systematically I use it as part of my personal philosophy and in my business.

So I guess my New Year's resolution is to stay strong to that conviction. Keep things organic, flowing, simple and natural.

Ingredient and recipe shots for Paleo Cookbook by Elana Amsterdam/ Ten Speed Press