somewhere between a handshake and two kisses

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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.

  • Natural Dyes with Mimi and California Country Magazine…

    It is nice to be connected with people who promote my photography, since I don’t do a good job of promoting myself. Ever since I returned from London, I have been meaning to take my portfolio around to magazines in the area, but I just haven’t gotten to it yet.

    But luckily, Mimi, my soon-to-be-mother-in-law, is an amazing person with a wonderful lifestyle that magazines want to write about. So when Brandon, from California Country Magazine, called her and said they wanted to do a story about her and her natural dying process, she said, “I have just the photographer for you.”

    It was so fun to have a taste of what real magazine work, and budgets, are like. The magazine gave me a shot list and an exact number of photos that they wanted… and when Brandon asked me if I would be “ok” with their day rate… I had to try and remain cool and not act surprised…. yeah, I guess that’ll do.

    These are just some of my favorites from the day and what I learned about natural dying…

    First… collect your plant material… Mimi uses black walnuts, dahlias, onion skins, marigolds and tansy (shown below.)

    Here is a super simplified instruction list for making your own natural dyes:

    Put your material in your pot…

    bring it to boil…

    cook for an hour…

    strain it…

    let it cool…

    add a mordant (Mimi uses nontoxic mordants like alum and cream of tarter)…

    add your pre-soaked wool…

    bring to boil again…

    cook for an hour…

    cool in dye…

    rinse until water runs clear…

    and hang to dry.

    Thanks to: Mimi for promoting me, and to California Country Magazine for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. I hope it is just the beginning of my magazine assignments.

    You can buy Mimi’s beautiful natural dyed wool at the Pt. Reyes Farmers’ Market in front of Toby’s Feed Barn on Saturdays, or she will soon be at the Marin Civic Center Farmers’ Market on Sundays.

  • A one year old… one year later…

    The photo above was sweet Sydney last year, when she was just a year old. As a one-year-old, Sydney just sat and smiled with her big blue-green eyes at the rapidly spinning world around her and at anyone who happened to pass by.

    And one year later… this is the same big-eyed girl, as a two year old…

    This year, when I had the camera out, the only photos I could get without her hiding her face behind her hands, were when she was looking through her mom’s purse, or sneering at me for interrupting her.

    Even swinging her around, until she was laughing uncontrollably and too dizzy to walk, she still held her newly shy hand up to her mouth.

    But finally, with quick and sneaky persistence… I eventually got the photo of the big-eyed girl I was looking for.

  • The same kid on the same bike… one year later…

    Above, is Hudson at his third birthday party, on his brand new bike. This photo was taken on medium format film.

    Below, is Hudson after his fourth birthday, standing a little bit more confidently and a little bit taller. This photo was taken with my 35mm digital.

    I wish I could say I planned this series… but both photos just happened, because if you want to photograph Hudson then this is what Hudson does at age 3 and 4. We’ll see what he is doing next year.

  • Day 2: Rattled goes to the Farm…

    This is the hardest post I have made yet… because there are so many cute photos, it took me a very long time to try and narrow down my favorites… but if you want to see more, you’ll just have to wait for the Rattled catalog to come out. And that is all I have to say about this amazing day of photographing cute kids on a beautiful farm with a perfectly overcast day. Hopefully, by looking at the photos, you can see that Rattled’s clothes are practical, durable and pretty darn cute… the only thing that makes them better is that they are organic! Yay Katie and Kristen, you did great!

  • Rattled = Organic Clothing for Kids that you will love… Day 1

    Katie McNicholas Winburn, from Greenville, South Carolina, was frustrated that she couldn’t find simple, practical, inexpensive and cute clothing for her toddler. She said the only clothing for toddlers that she could find either had: overwhelming patterns; awkward sayings or logos; came in pastel colors; or were too expensive… so, with the help of her sister-in-law, Kristen McNicholas, they decided to make their own organic clothing line called: Rattled.

    And in order to sell their new cute and ecologically responsible clothing line… they needed cute organic photos… so, after many many facebook messages, we finally agreed on a plan and I flew in for the week to take their photos.

    Katie and Kristen worked hard lining up the families, locations and coordinating the outfits for each child… and they did a fantastic job! It was so nice to show up and have everything all set up, so all I had to do was focus on taking cute photos.

    But even with all their excellent planning, the task was still a good challenge for me. Because I had never seen the location before, nor had I met the 4 toddlers, I had to think and act quickly (while recovering from jet-lag at 8:30 in the morning without coffee) in order to keep up with the constantly changing and moving little people.

    But we had lots of fun, and we learned a lot. For example, I tried to use a lighting kit I borrowed… but I quickly re-learned, once again, to stick to what I know, because following two-year-olds around a two-story house… with a light that needs to be plugged into wall and sit on a stand with an umbrella… did not work. So we moved furniture and used the gorgeous window light instead and it worked really well.

    And so, Day 1 was a big and messy success… and we were even more excited about Day 2: Rattled goes to the farm.

  • Get to know your food, farmers and the tools they use…

    Farming has changed greatly over the last two generations, as Gene Ponica knows that first hand. He says, growing up on a dairy ranch was not fun for a kid. But the dairy cows are long gone these days. It was too expensive and challenging to upgrade all the old equipment to meet today’s strict dairy standards, so now the only cows on Poncia’s 700 acre West Marin ranch are beef cattle… and, that means, for the first time in his life, Gene has time to go fishing.

    For the 2008 Annual Report for MALT (The Marin Agricultural Land Trust,) the theme was: Tools of the Trade. So I went to four different ranches and photographed tools old and new to help illustrate some of the changes that farming has gone through over the years.

    These are some samples of where farming has come from…

    I was told that in the “old days” ranchers were very resourceful… because they could not afford to buy new fancy equipment, they often had to build a lot of their tools, in order to make their chores a little easier. I saw lots of homemade tractors, and my favorite… the milking track shown in the photo below. These old carts ran on a track around the barn to distribute the hay, that dropped from the barn above, to the cows waiting to be milked in the barn below.

    Then I saw some tools that were used in the “old days” and that are still going strong today… like The Straus Family Creamery’s organic milk bottling and washing machines. It was such a beautiful process to watch. And as a quick aside: Albert Straus is absolutely the nicest (extremely successful) business man I have ever met… all of his employees in the office and the factory clearly like and respect him. It is refreshing to know that a good man is behind a good product… and it makes me feel good to buy that beautiful milk bottle in the grocery store, even if it is more than my budget would like, because good quality products are not cheap.

    And then I got to experience a modern milking industry in action… and I saw the process of cheese making from start to finish, at the Giacamini Ranch, where they make Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese.

    Definitely no milking by hand here, because in order to keep up with their demand, they need to milk over 300 cows in 5 hours. And the secret to their rapid success… this handy little machine below…

    I have spent many hours milking cows by hand… and I am really glad I had not seen this machine during that time period, because I didn’t fully understand how easy it could have been…. no spilled milk, or hours of hand cramping milking, in this super sterile barn.

    Then all that milk ends up here… where the rest of the magic begins…

    And the beautiful final products…. cheese…. and manure. The cheese is carefully packaged and shipped off to grocery stores across the US… and the manure is carefully collected, processed and diverted from the waterways… in order to protect our environment for the next generation of farmers and consumers.

    My conclusion… get to know where your food comes from… how it is made and who is making it… and you will appreciate it all a whole lot more. Support your local organic farmers and cows.

  • Trying to wow with my cows… and one sheep…

    For the last three years, I have been lucky to get assignments for MALT, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. I do all kinds of things for them, including, documenting events like Taste of Marin, and their hikes on MALT protected ranches. It has been a wonderful partnership, because I have been able to go places that I wouldn’t normally get to go to and meet people who I wouldn’t meet otherwise.

    And for the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to collect images for their Annual Report. The theme is ‘tools of the trade.’ I will post some of those photos next. But in addition to tools, Elisabeth also wanted powerful overall landscape photos… photos that show nature, with a slight trace of human impact and some animals. My first round of photos weren’t so impressive… which isn’t surprising because landscapes really are not my specialty.

    So, I had one last night to try again… but it is challenging with our bright blue cloudless skies, because without anything interesting in the sky, it puts all the pressure is on the landscape itself… and the window of opportunity for good landscape light lasts about 10 minutes… and then it is gone. So it is a game of wait…wait…wait…wait…wait….then…. go-go-go-go-go…. and then it’s over… until next year’s Annual Report… so I hope, with these photos, I got what she wanted.

  • The man I am going to marry…

    On my last night in town before I flew home to South Carolina, I had to get a few more landscape photos for an assigment. So Arann and I decided to multi-task… date night with mussels and french fries, landscape photos, and photos of him in his chicken suit… of course. (The cows were very intrigued… it was not a typical Tuesday night event for them.)

    For those of you who don’t know, Arann is the lead singer of The Bluebellies, and he writes and sings a lot of songs about chickens. He really wants everyone in the band to buy chicken suits for their next band photo… but chicken suits are not cheap… so he is having a hard time convincing the other members it is a worthwhile investment. This one came from Target and was about $70. I bought Arann’s suit, because I figured it can be a write-off, since, as you can see, it is for my very serious photo-business.

    One funny detail… the tag says the suits are ‘one-size-fits-all,’ but as you can see, they weren’t expecting one of those All’s to be 6’4.

    And I really like how Arann left the hanger tag on the suit… it is very Arann…

  • Life’s little surprises…

    I am in South Carolina right now for two reasons. The first reason is to photograph a friend’s new organic clothing line for kids… and the second is to visit my mom.

    Two weeks ago our family dog, Freckles, who was 14 years old, had to be put to sleep. She had a lot of health issues that kept getting worse. We knew we didn’t have long but we didn’t know we had so short either… and two weeks ago the vet finally said it was ‘time.’ But even with the vet’s advice that moment is so so so hard… and even harder when you have to make that decision alone… which is what my mom had to do.

    So when this fun work opportunity came up, I knew it would be a good excuse to visit my mom at the same time.

    And as life has its ways of throwing in surprises… tonight, when I went to pick up my mom from school, we turned around in a driveway of one of Reidville’s oldest houses. The lady who lived there, one of Reidville’s oldest residents, passed away last summer… right before I started working on my project about the town. Anyway, no one lives there now except for all her multiplying cats… and as we pulled in the driveway, they all scattered… except one.

    This little one with eyes all glued shut just sat there looking pitiful. So, I walked over expecting him to run into the bushes… but he just sat squinting at me through his goopy eyes and he let me pick him up. So, instead of driving to the pharmacy to pick up DVD’s, we drove to the vet instead.

    And after being cleaned inside and out of all his ear mites, worms, fleas, and eye boogers… we have ourselves a new kitten who likes to sit on my shoulder and purr. And we are wondering if he is ready to move to California… surprise, honey.

  • Rain in September and Door 2 Door

    Two amazing things happened tonight.

    The first amazing thing; it rained. It hasn’t rained since, I don’t know, April, it seems like forever, and normally it doesn’t rain until the end of October. The earth is so dry, the hills are bare, and wild fires have run rampant. But tonight, in the middle of September, it rained! Good news for the agriculturalists; bad news for the wine growers.

    But for us, the urban Petalumans attending Tyler Young’s Door 2 Door event at Aqus Cafe, it just meant we had to bundle up and get a little wet. Door 2 Door was the second amazing event of this mid-September night.

    Door 2 Door is part of Tyler’s Project Here. The purpose is strengthen the community in Petaluma by helping Petalumans get to know their neighbors. He sent out a request that people photograph themselves in front of their front doors, and then send in the photos for a collage made up of Petaluma faces and the homes they belong to. 90 people sent in photos. And about that many people came to the opening tonight, to show their faces, admire their photos, and meet their neighbors… in the rain.

    To add an additional fun element to the evening, Tyler asked me to photograph the guests in front of a 100 year old door that was rescued from a house demolised by the 2006 tsunami in Indonesia. The door was brought to the event by Michael, “Bug,” from Heritage Salvage (pictured below.) I believe there are more of these beautiful doors for sale at Heritage Salvage if you are looking for an amazing door.

    We had lots of fun playing in the rain. And it was definitely a kid-fest… they loved the huge parking lot puddle that was near where I was photographing and so there are quite a few photos with heads dashing across the front of the frames.

    And then it got dark. So, lucky for me, out came Tyler’s lighting equipment. Who knew I would fall in love with lighting. But his kit was so easy… you just plug it into the wall and start shooting… until the running children trip over the cord and the whole kit falls over buring a hole in the umbrella… but it was good photographing while it lasted.

    And this is Tyler, the man behind it all. He’s the kind of person who dreams big and then actually makes those dreams happen, and I am glad to know him and contribute to his community building dreams.

    If you attended the event and would like to see more of the photos, please visit my on-line gallery by clicking here. All proceeds of the photos will go back to Tyler so he can continue to fund his fantastic projects.