somewhere between a handshake and two kisses

recent posts

about

Paige Green is a documentary and portrait photographer, whose storytelling approach to photography frequently addresses issues involving agriculture, land use, and food. Her work is featured in nine books and has been published in Glamour, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, GQ, Country Living, House Beautiful, and Culture. Paige lives in Petaluma, CA with a house full of boys.

  • My heart hurts today…

    michelle08-_0014web

    On November 4th, 2008, Californians voted not to allow people of the same sex to get married, even though the California Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to prevent humans of their basic right to marry the person they love.

    My fiancé, Arann and I were at the Westin Hotel in San Francisco on election night, with our dear friends who worked so hard on the No on 8 campaign to protect equality for all. The huge ball room was packed with couples who were so nervous that their right to marry the person, who they loved most in the world, would be taken away. The room was thick with emotions, as we all waited and waited and waited. The numbers coming in were not good. And eventually, they told everyone to go home because we wouldn’t have an answer until the morning… but we all knew.

    And today my heart hurts.

    martha-marguerite_0237web

    Arann and I are supposed to get married on April 4, 2009. But I called him from the airport today and said I didn’t think we should get married. And he said he was thinking the same thing.

    When we first got engaged, I wasn’t so sure about the idea of having a wedding. But slowly the idea grew on us and we started to understand the importance. A wedding is not a marriage, but it is a ceremony that brings together all the love and support of everyone in your community, as you take this huge step forward.

    So, the more we thought about the meaning of our big step forward, the more we felt it was important to have our community with us, as we vow to care for each other for the rest of our lives. It is especially important to us that my grandparents, who will celebrate their 65 wedding anniversary next year, are there to pass on their advice and inspiration to us.

    grents01web1

    So, we picked a day and we started making plans. A hike, followed by a ceremony, followed by a reception with a collective art show, with the theme: Advice, followed by good food and dancing. We thought that would be the perfect way to enter into the next stage of our lives as a married couple.

    But as we stood there election night, surrounded by people whose hearts were breaking as they were told their marriages would no longer be accepted… we started to question why we should have the right to marry, when other people don’t, just because their body parts are the same.

    It doesn’t make any sense to me. In a world of such hatred and fighting, why wouldn’t we want to encourage and support people who want to build their community? Why don’t we want to encourage people to promise to love and care for each other for the rest of their lives? If it is about God, I was taught that we are not supposed to judge, so… then let God judge, if that is what you believe.

    Same sex marriages will not hurt you.

    The pesticides people spray on their lawns that washes into the storm drains, and into the rivers, and pollutes the water, and kills the fish, and breaks down the food chain… will hurt you. The SUV’s people drive that consume a lot of gas and spit out a lot of carbon dioxide that heats up the planet, and melts the glaciers, and raises the sea levels… will hurt you. But allowing people to love the person they choose to love in their own homes… will not hurt you.

    So, Arann and I would like to get married. We want the love and support of our community, but we don’t want to get married until everyone can. And so today, my heart hurts and my eyes are sore from crying because I have a better understanding of what it feels like not to be able to marry the person you love.

    If you believe in equality for all, please take a moment and sign this petition:

    http://www.petitiononline.com/seg5130/petition.html

    Thank you for your support.

    _mg_4906

  • How will you be remembered?

    Meet Aunt Trudy….

    This is how I was introduced to her this week… through a stack of black and white photos and letters left behind, and diligently saved by relatives who barely knew her. Years later, those relatives are digging through the leftovers and trying to piece together the scattered remnants in order to tell the story of her life.

    As a minor contribution to their efforts, I offered to scan the photos, so Trudy’s story could be shared with other interested relatives.

    While I was scanning these wonderful souvenirs of what seems to be a happy and amazing life, these are the thoughts that came to me…

    The past looks so much better in 2-dimensional black and white photos. I found myself envious of the life of this person who I have never met. I know better than to think it was a perfect time in history, but I think I would have liked the more simplified lifestyle.

    Old black and white photos are so incredible because of their ability to stand the test of time but what will we leave behind when all is said and done?

    How will the digital photos, the ones that actually get printed, hold together when our future curious relatives want to start digging up the past? Will they have to go through our Facebook and email accounts in order to fill in our blanks? Will those cyber scrapbooks still exist? Or will our lives disappear once we disappear? And does it really matter anyway?

    Well, I don’t have any of the answers, but I know these photos made me smile and reflect for a minute… and I am not even related to her.

    So all I can say is… I hope you enjoy Aunt Trudy and her love of life, and cottage cheese, as much as I do. And maybe we should all save a couple of our favorite photos in a safe, waterproof and harddrive crash proof, place for our curious future… just in case facebook is not around.

  • More Kiea and Colin (I had to!)…


    I just loved the digital photos from my ‘after-the-wedding-photo-shoot’ with Kiea and Colin so much, so it isn’t a big surprise that when I finally scanned my Rolleiflex film… I love these photos too. These first three are my absolute favorites. I accidentally scanned them with the scanner set on color film… which gives black and white negatives this sepia look… maybe that is how sepia is made, I don’t know… but I like the way it looks on these, so I didn’t fix them.

    This one above is a little too Gone with the Wind for my liking, but I wanted to include it anyway.

    Yay, Rollei… I love you still.

  • Making an Album…

    My fiance Arann Harris is a musician. And the start of our relationship, 5 1/2 years ago, also marks the official starting line for each of our prospective artistic pursuits. I went to work (for free) as an “intern” at a studio in San Francisco and he went to Open Mic Nights. He went to awkward studio parties with me and I went to even more awkward and off-key Open Mic Nights with him.

    Now, 5.5 years later, it is amazing to see how much we each have grown… and every once and awhile we have to stop and remind each other of where we started, just to appreciate how far we have come.

    Today was one of those important musical milestone days for Arann. Today Arann recorded his first album.

    Above is the “studio” on the outside. Below is the studio on the inside where… 5 musicians, 1 sound man and 1 documentary film maker spent 10 rainy hours, playing each song again and again, until everyone felt they got it right.

    When the crew finally wearily emerged from the old school house on The Green String Farm, they were happy and very tired. And now we wait, eagerly, to hear what all their hard work will come to, after the sound man works his sound magic…. and maybe, just maybe… Arann Harris will finally have his very first CD…. so stay tuned.

    Congratulations, Arann! I am proud of you… of us.

  • Portraits I love of Souls I love…



  • America’s Next Top Pregnant Model (Part 2: Film)…

    I have been so busy over the last month that I haven’t had time to scan my Rolleiflex negatives from the last several photo shoots… and it had been so long that I almost started to think that maybe digital was good enough. Maybe I wouldn’t do film so much anymore, because digital is so much easier and cheaper… but then I scanned these. And I am in love again!

    To see the digital photos from the same photo shoot click here.

    And once again, here is the first baby of the family, who is not so excited about the new baby soon to come.


  • America’s Next Top Pregnant Model…

    Beth is another beautiful pregnant very-soon-to-be-mom and she wanted some photos of her baby belly. She had done her homework and watched America’s Next Top Model… so she knew all the right looks and poses so we did the usual pretty photos by the window…

    But then we went to the beautiful rocky coastline near their home in Santa Cruz. And for those of you who are not in California and think of California as Sunny California… that is not often the case in Northern California. Just ask Beth… she did her best to hold her poses but it was hard when her teeth were chattering and her lips were turning blue but it was not easy. Rollei photos to come.

  • My week last week…

    What I learned about product photography:

    • steaming is better than ironing.
    • swabs are better than plastic squeezey things that blow air when you want to clean your digital sensor.
    • t-pins, straight pins with glass heads, and bubble wrap can come in handy when you want to add life to your still life.
    • computer capture would be better than camera capture…if your computer wanted to capture the photos.
    • table-top would be better than floor-top… but if it is on the floor then stretch at the same time in order to get your daily exercise.
    • changing the color in photoshop is much easier than trying to make 12 items look wrinkle free, lint free, and positioned exactly the same way (ps: there is a color replacement tool in CS3 that will change the color for you… although still tricky to match the exact color you want… it is ridiculously easy.)
    • calling your friend Jon, who knows how to do all this stuff already, is much better than trying to figure it out all by yourself.
    • photographing people without clothes is a lot easier than photographing clothes without people.

  • Remembering the meaning of it all…

    Remember Meghan and Tom from their engagement photo session a couple of months ago? Well, they are happily married now… but it was not an easy journey.

    Rings not finished, groom stuck in a traffic jam missing the rehearsal, brother stranded in Chicago without a flight, hotel rooms not reserved, veil flying off right before entering the church… you name it… and it happened to poor Meghan and Tom. Stress was definitely very close to the surface during the final days and minutes leading up to the wedding.

    But it was amazing how the minute Meghan walked through the doors of Old St Mary’s Church in Nicasio, the oldest country church in the United States, because all of the drama and nerves disappeared, and suddenly the purpose of all their hard work became clear again. The fact that Meghan and Tom finally made it up to the alter was proof that they were stronger than all of the hurdles thrown in their way.

    And now they begin to live happily ever after.

    Right? Come on, look at how story-book-perfect that setting is, you have to say stuff like that when the setting is so perfect.

    The digital photos are still to come…. Yay, Meghan and Tom!!

  • Just a small intermission…

    It has been ages since my last post, and for that I apologize. It has been a crazy time, but I am back and ready to blog again. The good news is, hopefully, there will be lots of fun posts, as I have to make up for lost time.

    The most recent photo news: Arann and I built a photo booth… for real. A for real real photo booth, and so we are excited to have that as a part of the Paige Green Photography tool box.

    The occasion was KWMR’s Bi-Annual Barn Party Gala at Warren Hellman’s amazing ranch in West Marin and the theme was the Golden Age of Radio. Warren Hellman is the fantastic man behind the (FREE) Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert series in the Golden Gate Park every year. So, needless to say, Arann, a big fan of bluegrass and an aspiring performer at Hardly Strictly, really really wanted to go to KWMR’s Bi-Annual Barn Party Gala at Warren Hellman’s barn…. so he sold KWMR on a photo booth… that we didn’t have.

    (Here we are still setting it up and testing it out. I really liked the distorted larger than life head and tiny body wide angle look… but Arann thought it was a bit much… so we went with a more standard style below.)

    So… long story short… we pulled it off (barely) by the hair of our collective chins… and in the end it looked pretty cool. And now we are excited to use it for future events… so if you want a photo booth at your next event… we’ve got a good one for you… just tell us the theme and well bring the props.

    For those of you who attended the event, and would like your complimentary paige green photography photo booth photo… just click here.