wild strawberry hair

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wild strawberry hair


Image by postbear
detail showing the hairs on the berries, as well as the ubiquitous fluff that the spit is carpeted with these days.

the last two weekends i rode out to the leslie street spit and picked wild strawberries. i initially forgot to bring a decent sized container, since i was there mostly for the ride and to take photographs, so i ate everything i picked, which was no penalty at all. this past sunday i took two large yoghurt containers (750 grams, about 3.5 cups) and filled them, along with stuffing my face. here are a few strawberries on the stem.

these taste like strawberries, by the way, not like supermarket horrorshows which taste like water and futility. these are also tiny – the biggest of them is about the size of your smallest fingernail, a fair-sized pea or a disclaimer made on a suspect product advertisement (let’s say 1.5 cm across).

it took me over three hours to pick them, with the odd break to move my bike along with me and ward off curious humans. while picking i thought about how much i’d have to be paid if i were to sell them, and i couldn’t come up with an answer. obviously the usual absurd figurees would be acceptable (millions of dollars for my berries? sure!), but as the figures crept toward the possible, i knew i’d refuse all offers. there would be no point in doing this hard work (and while fruit picking is generally difficult, wild strawberries are just a giant pain in the ass) – the heat, bug attacks and back and knee pain would make me charge a stranger many hundreds of dollars, and if said stranger had that kind of money to toss arount, i’d certainly veer straight into highway robbery just out of spite and robin hood tendencies. wild strawberries are often (i’d guess almost always) guarded by hills of grumpy little ants with big jaws, and despite my insect repellent (sprayed on shoes and socks, too), i was bitten many, many times. the mosquitoes also got me, as did a whole host of flies – i would have paid for some rain, to be honest.

i’ll shoot the pickings later, i’ve hulled, cleaned and eaten some, but had no time to shoot. last night a friend told me he’d bought some wild strawberries (or a small, wild-ish cultivar) at his local farmer’s market here in town and only paid four dollars for a good-sized basket. good deal, especially since the adjacent stall was selling the big waterbomb ones for a dollar more per basket. i will settle for a million per container, so if you are rich and foolish, get in touch.

oh, and if you want to pick your own, you’ll have to wait for next year. these were pretty much done when i was there on sunday. i’m not telling exactly where my field is on the spit, but they jump around at times – one prime location three years ago has nothing in it this year, and a couple of other spots varied in their fruit production.

final teaser: i’m eating some now, all on their own and warm from the sun.

DSC01912


Image by cwangdom
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Salon 7 – Products on a leaf (2 of 5)


Image by Joe Lencioni
I was recently hired to take some photos for the newish Salon 7 in Mankato, MN. These are the ones I liked the best.

Lili Payne is putting together a snazzy website for them and they were hoping to get some good photos for that and maybe some future marketing materials. These photos are so fresh that they haven’t even seen them yet. In fact, I’m putting them on a CD right now and mailing them out.

The shoot itself was a good time and the people were all really nice. Although, I would have liked to have spent a little more time just hovering about, taking photos of random things, I think I got a few decent shots that are worth using. I hope they like them too.

This photo was taken from Shifting Pixel (Permalink, additional comments)