Friday 14 August 2015

Posted: 14 Aug 2015 05:00 AM PDT

Los Angeles-based photographer Robert P. Cohen remembers his grandmother’s house simply as “Mama’s House.” During his childhood, the Woodmere, Long Island home was where all the children came together to eat their grandma’s fresh-baked goods, to play, leap and bound across the fancy furniture, and be tucked in at night with familiar tales of distant family member and ancestors. Six months after his grandmother’s death, Cohen returned once more to the house, preserving its images just as it had been when she was alive.
In making This House Was a Home, the photographer slept over for four nights, waking in time to catch the sun flittering in through the windows, through which could be seen distant planes flying into JFK airport. Both of his grandparents, he explains, were survivors of the Holocaust, and his grandmother took great care in building a house to call home. The family spirit, suggests Cohen, was always present here, decades of tradition preserved through photographs and cherished memorabilia. When the grandparents came to visit, “Mama,” as they called her, would have pies and cakes already prepared in the cupboard.
Of his grandmother’s desserts, the cheesecake was Cohen’s favorite; even when he returned months after she had gone, he admits, he double-checked the cupboard one last time just in case. A batch of cookies remained in a jar where she had left them. The French Provincial furniture of which she had been so proud remained. Every inch of the place, says Cohen, recalled something of his early years playing with his family.
On each of the four mornings he woke, the photographer’s mind instinctually reverted back to his youth, when he would enter the kitchen to find his grandmother cooking away. At night, he was haunted by the same fretfulness that he felt as a child when the house creaked or made noises under the veil of darkness. He’s shown the images to all in his immediate family and reports that each has a special favorite. “One of my cousins was very curious to know if I saw any ghosts while in the house. I didn’t,” says the artist.
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All images © Robert P. Cohen
The post Photographer Returns to His Beloved Grandma’s House Six Months After Her Death appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Squarespace’s New Online Skillshare Course Shows you How to Build Your Own Portfolio (Sponsored)

Posted: 13 Aug 2015 09:00 AM PDT

As a photographer, having a beautiful and easily navigable website is no longer a luxury but a necessity. When you’re an artist, the idea of marketing yourself and building your brand can seem overwhelming and time consuming, especially when it means learning complex programming to build an online presence. Luckily, with Squarespace, all you’ll need to make the perfect website for you is your work; Squarespace’s George Denison, whose free online course has just launched in partnership with Skillshare, will walk you through the rest (and you won’t have to write a line of code, we promise).
Squarespace’s brand new class, Creating a Website to Build Your Online Brand, makes the process of creating a web presence easy and straight-forward from start to finish. With Denison’s help, you’ll learn what you need to get started, how best to organize your site, and how to maintain and grow your platform over time.
Based on your own individual business goals, you will learn what kind of website and template can work for your unique content, from a simple cover page, which acts much like a business card and takes only fifteen minutes to create, to a multipage experience. Should you choose the later and use your website to showcase your portfolio and build a community of loyal customers, Squarespace will take you through the step-by-step process of making five essential core pages: the home page, the about page, the product page, the contact page, and the blog.
Once you’ve put all your content together, Squarespace will give you key insight into attracting wider audiences through Search Engine Optimization, email lists, and a beautiful interface. You’ll find professional insight into how to make the pages of your website flow with one another, making it easy and clear for potential clients to navigate.
Best of all, Squarespace’s Skillshare course doesn’t end when you’re done making your website but continues to offer support on building and expanding. Skillshare is devoted to fostering a sense of community development, and with the feedback of peers, you’ll learn exactly what needs to be done to make your website work for you. Skillshare has over one million active students who are excited to engage with and to learn with you. If you’ve been delaying making your site, or if your website has become outdated and uninteresting, now’s the time to take the plunge; Squarespace will be there every step of the way.
The post Squarespace’s New Online Skillshare Course Shows you How to Build Your Own Portfolio (Sponsored) appeared first on Feature Shoot.

Abstract Photos of the Unexpected Patterns that Arise While Cooking

Posted: 13 Aug 2015 07:00 AM PDT

Olive oil, chicken fat, balsamic vinegar, salt, peppercorns, white wine

Ginger ale, whiskey, clear ice
For New York-based photographer Adrian Mueller, cooking isn’t a chore or the means to an end but a creative playground in and of itself. For Bubbles, he teamed up with longtime collaborator and food stylistTakako Kuniyuki to capture the miniature worlds that unfold atop ordinary stoves around the world each and every day, when two or more ingredients collide.
In Mueller’s eyes, the hustle and bustle of daily life has a tendency to occlude the tiny instants of surprise and elegance that go unnoticed in the context of banal activities. How many times, he wonders, do we stop for a moment to recognize “ the beauty of a champagne bubble” before taking a sip?
The photographer had noticed serendipitous patterns, colors and shapes taking form throughout his various projects with Kuniyuki; the next logical step was to devote an entire series to these abstract, yet archetypal, constellations that appear across the surface of her frying pans and skillets. Bubbles was photographed in a kitchen studio, the beads and blisters of household items captured using available light and amplified with a strobe.
Since both Mueller and Kuniyuki came into Bubbles with a firm grasp on how certain elements interact with and merge with others, they were able to identify concoctions that would produce the most dynamic imagery, but the project was not without its fair share of unexpected revelations. Along the way, they encountered fortuitous combinations that yielded confounding—and eye-catching—results. Here, the duo hopes to use visuals to evoke other sensory responses, recalling overlooked aromas and flavors that saturate even the most familiar kitchen.
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