April Surrender and Liberty’s Pancakes

Posted on April 28th, 2013

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings. Agnes Martin

Last months have been tremendous busy for me out here. In between photo-shoots for the new issue of What Liberty Ate magazine, moving into a new house, plans for future, my regular job (I’m still involved full-time in projects for IBM), graphic design projects, and a BIG photo-shoot for a major client in Czech Republic, for which I styled over 30 fresh drinks, cocktails and milkshakes, I found time to film this short movie in my new studio. I moved into a big and full of light house, and I set up my studio into the spacious mansard. I can not tell you how happy I am with this change, I found the light is simply amazing here, and I can not wait to find more time to experiment further with the light, set up and the rest, as I’m blooming ideas! Let me know what you think about my short films, I first started to compile videos in 2005, but since then it has been an eternity and since I received my Canon 5D Mark II I’m more eager to recall this asleep passion and to improve it.

But enough about this, I wanted to tell you a little about how amazing was my experience as food stylist. It’s amazing to work with a big professional team and to merge your ideas and vision with the one the client has. It’s all based on communication and you have to make sure that you’re clear enough about all your intentions before starting doing the job. You have to adapt while still keeping your style to the requirements. Food styling or photographing food might seems super easy, but above all there is a lot of work which is going inside one photograph, organization, planning and talent from all sides. I was communicating great with the photographer for this shooting, you have to make sure as food stylist that you understand the vision of the photographer and vice-versa. At the end you and him will be responsible for the whole project’s result. I’ll make sure to be back here with some photographs of this shooting to illustrate for you better this experience, and more details on the story. Later on I’ll be also involved in some other projects for styling and photographing and this is only making me even more happier to do what I love. And not last, please don’t forget in mid-May we are launching our 4th issue of What Liberty Ate magazine, it’s all packed gorgeously, I have worked a lot to elevate it and grow it into a beautiful collection volume to read and enjoy at any time!

Liberty’s Pancakes
Ingredients (makes 16 pieces 4 cm each):
45g millet flour
45g corn flour
45g buckwheat flour
20g wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 pinch of salt
2 eggs separated
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
125ml yogurt
125ml milk
vanilla extract
1 tablespoon olive oil
orange zest

Directions:
1. Sift the flours, baking power, baking soda and salt in a big bowl. In another bowl place the egg yolks, sugar, yogurt, milk, olive oil, vanilla and orange zest. Beat till homogenous. Set aside.
2. Place egg whites into a large clean mixing bowl and beat them on medium speed with an electric hand whisk until stiff peaks appear. Gently fold it into the mixture of eggs made above. When perfectly combined, sift the flours and stir till blended, don’t over mix it though.
3. Preheat a pancakes pan on medium heat. Grease it with a small amount of oil. Pour composition into the pan and fry each pancake 1 minute on each side. Serve it with maple syrup and strawberries.

Florilegium – Vulnerability and Self-Reliance

Posted on April 6th, 2013

Not long ago, in 2012, when I first had the courage to concrete a dream that I was having it as my own shadow, I had to write my personal statement of purpose. I have never write any statement of purpose, especially emphasizing my affinity to photography. I stroke out a few weeks before actually starting to write it. I didn’t knew from where to start and how to explain in words why I would see myself doing photography for the rest of my life. Then I started the introspection and I was ready to put few words on paper. I don’t remember how many times I re-write it. After 5th revision I stopped counting.

By doing this statement of purpose I realized some things about me. It was hard to actually write about myself. Explaining yourself was a hard step to achieve, but this eventually gave me more light into what I wanted to pursue after all. I wanted to write a story with characters that will gently highlight my competencies, but I failed to do so. Somehow, I was avoiding to write about myself. I wanted to write a truthful and impressive way my life was until then: success and failure equally. In one Saturday thought, I sat down at my computer and I started to write anything, just so I can know I started.

Above all this struggle that I felt during this mandatory assignment, I understood more about what photography means to me. But, above all this statement of purpose made me see what I don’t want to be in life. I was disapproving so much those people unable to be true to themselves, people lying to themselves so often so that they forgot who they really are. Mediocrity blended with lies made me search for authenticity. I was ready to create, to search deep for the true meaning of my artistic act, to fight, to go beyond any limits, just to be true to myself. I was not conceiving a fake artistic statement from myself. I didn’t wanted. This was my limit, authenticity or nothing. So, I understood I want this, and I wanted to be surrounded by people that believe in same principles, creative people whose struggle can inspire, can change. It was not a choice to still hang with non-assertive people whose character could be sold for a cup of coffee, disparately needing success, but to go into the search of the life I wanted. Tired of stolen caricature creation, where the message was just incertitude, chaos, insincerity, I took the leap.

I felt scared about the change. I felt things were going to change. I didn’t knew how and when. I was struggling with fears – if I’m able to do it, if it will happen, if I will do it, how can I do it better, how to improve, how to be able to express more. These fears were bouncing in all directions in my heart and were often destabilizing my horizon. Suddenly, I felt I lost my balance and I was blaming my too much brave self-esteem and despair of going beyond limits. I was not sure I could handle all the change I pictured it will be. Other times, I was happily ignoring everything, saying to myself it will never happen the way I wanted, the way I saw it. Soon to this feeling, I was going to re-memorize my whole life, and spot any effort done to change my life in better. And don’t get me wrong, I bet in a standard way of seeing things, that my life was positioned pretty well, but my head was whispering all the time to me, to go and search.

So then, you would find me again into the search of something that was meant to make me happy. But you see… few times, I guess, I took the wrong way. Then, after some years and some more struggle, I felt I found my balance, and then this craziness was coming back. It was like a curse. Then, in I don’t remember what day, simply it came to my mind, why not to do it? Why not going down the road and see what’s happening for me down there? Why not to try this break of limits? Maybe this change I was looking for – quite long already (or maybe it was too less time) -, was meant to happen. So, that was the moment I choose to enroll myself to a photography master in USA. Only the thought of not being accepted, or of being accepted, and not be able to handle, or even worst, of being accepted and not being able to go, was restarting somehow my torment. I guess, I was build that way, that any microscopic detail that touched the heart was confusing me to the point where I will go and analyze the issue until I will be satisfied with the solution. Maybe this is a way of resolving problems in life. Or maybe I wanted simply to know too much, for some still unknown reason to me.

Sometimes, I’m at work and I wish to tell you all this, so that maybe some of you out there could understand me better. Often, I wish not to live this struggle alone, and share it with you, but then my words simply disappear and the page looks blank to me. I was in some sort of blockage, where I was writing all these letters mentally, but not on paper. Some trigger however released and I woke up writing these lines. I still feel worried as I wish I could have more control of these things that are changing in my life, but I feel happy I had the courage of taking the leap.

Florilegium is dedicated to you – the restless soul, always in search of love, of believes, the poor soul killed with sadness or with too much joy; is dedicated unconditionally to the one, and only true believer in those dreams that you know they will some day reach the starts, and will be true to you. Florilegium will be a non-defined term project that will guide you closer to the truth of who you are, aiming ambitiously to forget about any limits and obstacles life will suddenly put in your path. These are my imagery persuasions.

Marinated Grilled Chicken with Physalis Rice and Basil Tomato Sauce

Posted on April 1st, 2013

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!—Viktor Frankl

I’ve been wanting to write to you these days about these distressful thoughts we have in life. We all have them, no matter what they are about—making our life to be the perfect life we don’t actually have, wanting success and looking for prestige desperately—we chose to not have time to speak about our own feelings. My life is shifting, I found myself in big transitions, neither too perfect nor imperfect, but still enough thoughtful to learn from all this transformation, arbitrary or planed. I’ve never been afraid of thinking my own thoughts and even more than this, to make them real. I’ve always had this incredible desire to construct that form of greatness sometimes I felt was in my thoughts. Any attempt to render to reality my ideas and give myself up to total freedom to create, was stronger than any form of prestige that could only mess up what I really like. I admit that deceitfulness has never existed in my life, more because of some form of egoism that kept me away of troubling my composure and which eventually led me to care more about genuineness than worrying about the opinion of the rest of the world.

But today, there was the Beatles and Presley playing, snowing was falling outside, then sun was raising and old vinyls smell was making everything better…I was searching reasons for this expectation, silently, almost struggling not to fall back, to keep believing. The world seemed at equals times meaningless or exuberant. This succession was keeping my existence real, undisguised. I was sure I can not get the ultimate answer or purpose, as the circumstances were changing and I was loosing the capacity of deliberating my own choices. I’ve always enjoyed the liberty of choosing my attitude in any given circumstances, to choose my own way, to brighten at the view of being able to make decisions. Decisions about myself or the life I’m living, big dreams, hidden thoughts—all this was giving me some inner complete freedom, that I was not ready (why should I be?!) to give up. The fact that I was able to find some meaning in any circumstance I was encountering, depending of the situation, agony or joy, was assuring me I have not lost my freedom. Freedom is for me, that part which is breaking out our real faces, when we can be at the climax of joy or when we can be deeply sadden. Freedom might be the perfect part of life, no matter what type of circumstances is touching, freedom it’s always keeping its balance, because life will be always about agony and joy. Freedom is adding meaning to our lifes and let’s us in complete control of what we are going to do. We should not forget that we have opportunities to change our lifes, we only need to make use of our desire to be better.

Marinated Grilled Chicken with Physalis Rice and Basil Tomato Sauce
Ingredients for the marinated chicken:
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon Jerk sauce
6 chicken thighs
1/2 lemon juice

Ingredients for the tomato sauce:
a handful of fresh basil
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1 clove garlic
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 glass of red sweet wine
250g canned tomatoes
salt and pepper
rice, physalis, lovage

Directions:
1. In a big bowl mix the buttermilk with the mustard, Jerk sauce, and marinate the chicken thighs in this mixture for at least 3 hours; set aside in the fridge. Brush away any excess of marinate from the chicken thighs and season with salt and pepper. Preheat a grill to medium heat, and add the chicken, skin side down. Cook, letting skin render and brown, until chicken is cooked halfway through, about 6-8 minutes. Drizzle the chicken with the lemon juice and grill it until is cooked through, 6-8 minutes.
2. Preheat a skillet to medium heat. Saute in a 1/2 tablespoon olive oil the garlic, add the tabasco and the basil finely chopped; cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Remove skillet from heat. Add tomatoes; cook over medium heat until reduced by half, 1-2 minutes. Add wine; cook until thickened, about 3 minutes. Season sauce with salt, pepper. Serve the chicken with rice, basil tomato sauce, physalis and fresh lovage.

raspberries and chocolate