Blue cheese iceberg, strawberry poundcake, Weld

The man above owns the house and I said, "Come here and see what this lens does to this room." 

I was on the floor kneeling using the chair seat at the end for platform, the lens is a few inches from the plate. He answered, 

"If I get down there I won't be able to get back up."

"I'll help you." 

So the two of us were on the floor using the same chair for a table sharing the camera viewfinder.

That's what I made.

This is the chef who helped. He is no longer a chef but retains his mad cheffery skills. He cubed an avocado, limed it up, and sprinkled black pepper all over. 

And then we put on our accents and amused ourselves, in cartoon French-English, 

"It iz a mountain. And dis iz le detritus. And this is the snow upon the mountain. And dis is l'avalanche."

And indeed, the salads looked like little landscapes. The guests repeated they had not seen the likes of it before, they are so encouraging. Most are already familiar with the simple blue cheese dressing iceberg at Emilenes that I learned from for this, but they remarked they found the combination of detritus excellently unfathomable. 

But that comes from various salsa frescas minus the onion and garlic and chiles and harsh things, just the nice things that children would like then pair that with blue cheese. That's the odd part. And not mix them. They must do that.  The watermelon touches the blue cheese by accident on the plate and delivers a surprise. They go! And so do the grapes. They're in control, the mixing unforced.

The pecans are burned on purpose, but only slightly, I kneeled there patiently watching to assure it, so that they give up their nut-meatiness and dissolve in the mouth leaving a faint charred pecan flavor, and the croutons are large toasted cubes with irregular rough surfaces, made of my own sourdough bread.

Who does that? 

The chef pictured above asked what type of sourdough I used and I told him my own, I baked it this morning, his jaw dropped and he said he wouldn't attempt sourdough. I told him the culture was collected out on the balcony and he looked at me as if I were quite mad. 

But all of that is common. I guess they didn't do such things in his hotel and his catering.
I did not make this but it sure was good.

The rest is a few shots of the place.

[edit: We photographer-types are an arrogant lot, we scorn manufacturer's settings and insist on shooting everything on manual, overriding the camera's preferences for our own. We're artists! I already know that I suck at shooting clouds no matter what settings I experiment, the camera's automatic setting beats me every time with that. But at this point I'm so stuck on using manual, it honestly never occurred to me to use it even though I knew that before when I started before I became arrogant, that's how arrogant I am now, and I missed a whole series of truly fantastic shots, right there, because of it. When everything alarmingly went blue when I stepped outside, had I just thought of automatic setting, it would have handled the difficult light situation brilliantly without a polarizing filter. I didn't think of it even when someone asked, "Doesn't it have a preset?" No, it does not, but it has automatic, and with clouds, its automatic is a lot better than I am. So. Please ignore me fretting about filters. For now I have automatic. Duh. *pounds head* ]

The house looks so quaint and unobtrusive from the roads, an out-of-scale thing happens when there are no buildings around to compare except barns, even the vehicles are not helpful for that. Once inside it goes on and on and on, I have no idea what the whole thing looks like.

I was prompted to take the above picture due to layers of color and all of that is lost in this photo. That tells me I need to research filters. This lens is a heavy stack of glass and it takes impressively sharp pictures, but, reaching for a serviceable universal analogy, it is like a hang glider designed for a hang glider pilot beyond your own skills, I have to learn up to it. And I am. 

That row of trees is on this side of the driveway. It looks like an inch but it is a very long row of trees. The state planted them. They do that. When you know the ins and outs and are willing to comport with State defined needs, not planting crops, planting specific range bushes in specific lays of land to provide specific habitats for specific wildlife, go along with all that and they'll pay for it and install it. Thousands of trees and bushes. 

Same row, different angle.

Stuff everywhere. 

In the three previous places it was like this too but packed with  hunting-related and Western outdoor related dozens of duck decoys everywhere some painted realistically, set around all over as art.  

That was the idea for a painting. It would be perfect, it would also be lost in the compacted layered clutter.  

Then this place was built and all that compressed content barely scattered to a few rooms. 

This photo is included solely to show you my art in situ. I love coming here and seeing my own art. 

This is the largest fresco I've painted, its weight is considerable and it is as long as my worktable. The original is famous because the two colorful geese are copied everywhere, but this includes all four dull geese too so that it would stretch on the wall. It is a 3/4 wall and it still dwarfs the painting to a postage stamp. 

Again, I need a filter, the rainbow was a lot more spectacular than this.


More of the same here if you care to look.