I suspect that, for most of us, Thanksgiving is a holiday about food...specificially the over-consumption of it. It’s a bum rap that turkeys got saddled with the gobble gobble gobble reputation, because, come the fourth Thursday of November, humans-types like me can out-gobble any bird.
In our home, however, there is one thing that must happen before people can sit down at the dining room table to begin the Thanksgiving feast, and that’s Photography. The food is always so beautiful, it needs to have its picture taken. It’s a pretty comical sight, actually...our guests sitting there at the table, napkins tucked under their chins, knives and forks in hand, salivating... and waiting...waiting while the lunatic with the camera hops around snapping-snapping-snapping.
Sorry, but that’s My Deal: When I see something wonderful, I almost always need to photograph it, food included. A couple of weeks ago a friend took Leah and me into an ultra-secret wooded area near her house to hunt for chanterelle mushrooms. By the end of the day Leah and I had gathered two big cloth shopping bags full of ‘shrooms...but before Leah the Wonderful Cook could begin the process of making mushroom soup or pasta or quiche, Kurt the Picture Man had to photograph the 'shrooms.
The same scenario was played out last weekend when Leah sent me, shopping list in hand, to the University District Farmers’ Market in Seattle. Before I could purchase the salad greens and parsnips that Leah had requested, I first wanted to cruise the market, photographing the scene. There were other shoppers, and of course beautiful produce, and it all needed to be photographed.
They are tasty, these moments of everyday life. Gobble gobble gobble.
