Rebecca Floren Photography

2020 Wrap-Up

I’m four days late in posting this. I meant to post it on December 31st, but as per usual, work got super chaotic and I lost track of anything that wasn’t eating, sleeping or putting out fires.

These aren’t necessarily my best pictures, but they are the ones that felt representative of the month.

January: Randy and I braved the bitter cold and went down to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Andy Warhol exhibit. I took this on our way to meet a friend for pizza and beer afterward.

February: B.C. (Before Coronavirus) I used to get up early on the weekends to shoot at sunrise. I love the early dawn light and it’s much easier to get up for the sunrise in the early spring than it is in the summer! If I had only known that in a few short weeks, I wouldn’t even be allowed along the lakefront because of a pandemic.

March: Life ground to a halt. When I left my office on Friday, March 13th, I thought I’d be back by April 1st. Oh, how naive I was! As people started to hoard food, I spent the next several weeks, making daily trips to multiple grocery stores hoping to find basics like toilet paper, bread, pasta, canned goods, frozen foods, milk, eggs, yeast, flour, soap and other cleaning supplies. I ate a lot of salads and off brand snacks! Funny (and maybe a little sad) how the produce department was always well stocked.

April: Illinois is under a stay at home order and all of sudden my photo walks felt dangerous. I became wary of people so I started walking in alleys to avoid people and photographing people’s trash. Everyone was eating and drinking a lot.

May: Two months into the pandemic and everything is still shut down. Cleaning supplies are still scarce and I’m on Zoom 3x a week talking to friends. I’d grown tired of walking the alleys so I started walking through the cemeteries.

June: Chicago is on fire, literally. The BLM protests have become violent and Chicago has a curfew. Once again, groceries become difficult to get as grocery stores are closed and boarded up. Animal shelters are cleared out because people have been adopting or fostering animals and I’m no exception. Gladys is my little Covid kitten. Though I didn’t get her from a shelter. I have my very own kitten dealer and because of her I have both Rose and Gladys. I think three cats makes me a bonafied cat lady!

July: I booked my first gig as a photographer. A friend of mine “hired” me to do her maternity pictures. The word hired is in quotes because no way was I going to let her pay me – I had no idea what I was I doing so we agreed that she’d buy dinner. It was a learning experience! Portrait photography is A LOT harder than I ever imagined it would be. Memo to self – learn how to pose people.

August: This was definitely the worst month of the year. Randy and I lost Henry on August 2nd. It was traumatic and devastating. We rushed him to the emergency vet on a Sunday night and had to wait in the car while waiting on news from the vet. I didn’t take any pictures this month.

September: I’ve been stuck at home for six months. I’m watching a lot of TV. I miss my friends, happy hours, dinners out, brunches, movies, and traveling. Most of my pictures of my cats.

October: I did family portraits for a friend. Again, I’m lucky since the stakes were pretty low. I bought speed light for the shoot having learned from the maternity shoot that the lighting would be poor. Not sure I used it properly though….

November: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected as President and Vice President and my neighborhood went nuts. People were dancing on the street corners and driving up and down Clark Street waving flags. Mayor Lightfoot even joined us and gave a little speech. I posted this image of a woman on her bike Flying the W (Cubs fans “Fly the W” when the Cubs win) on Instagram and had someone contact me asking if they could buy it.

December: I didn’t take many pictures in December with my Nikon, but I did take a picture everyday of the Christmas lights in my neighborhood with my iPhone and posted them in my Instagram stories with Christmas music.

Merry Christmas

35 mm prime lens, 20 seconds, ISO 800, f/8.0

I discovered these cool shadows cast by the ornaments hanging in my kitchen window by accident. I had a gnarly case of insomnia and wandered out to the living room to watch tv when these shadow caught my eye.

Since I couldn’t sleep, I thought it would be a good time to drag out the ‘ol tripod and experiment with long exposures.

I’m really loving the shadows and starting to think of other things to hang in my window after the Christmas decorations come down.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday!

xoxo,
Bec

Quick Clicks 12.18.2020

I’ve made it a point to take a walk every evening to gawk at the beautiful homes in my neighborhood all decked out for the holidays. I even managed to get a small group of friends to join me last Sunday night after bribing them with mulled wine and boozy hot chocolate. Each night I post a picture of one the homes from my walk in my Instagram stories. This was the picture from December 14th. I love how cozy this house is with a candle in every window and a few ornaments in the trees. Understated and very Scandinavian!

Here are a few things I read this week….

I loved this post on shooting indoors. Aren’t her photos beautiful? Winter + pandemic = good time start making some still life photographs.

Powerful Photography Remains our Greatest Weapon in 2020. While I agree with the writer that photography is a powerful documentary tool, I don’t agree that it’s unbiased. If there is a human operating the camera, there will be bias. After all, the photographer decides what to include in the photograph and what to exclude.

This is nice blog post from a photographer who shot pictures from the night that John Lennon died. He shares his experience along with a few photos.

Quick Clicks

While I’m trying to figure out the whole adapter/new computer situation, I thought I’d share a few photography related articles, blog posts, videos or anything else I found interesting throughout the week.

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation. This is a great piece from the New York Times.

If you have some time, this video was fun to watch (it’s 45ish mins long). Three bros are critiquing black and white photos. What they don’t know is some photos are by Ansel Adams and some are amateur snapshots. At the end, they have to guess which photos are Ansel Adams’s and which aren’t. I especially love the guy who thinks three of Ansel Adams’s photos were his own even though he didn’t remember taking them. 😂 And one of them asked an interesting question at the end…should anything else matter other than the finished image?

This photographer is quarantining with his mother and ex-wife and making a photographic diary about it. Yikes! The toilet paper photo really hits home for me. There was a time this spring that I had to resort to paper towels until the shelves were stocked again. How about you? Can you relate to any of the pictures?

This post lists a ton of tutorials available for pretty cheap. I’m currently pursuing a Photography Certificate, but if I had the time I think I’d try the street photography tutorial, the landscape tutorial or any of the Lightroom tutorials.

Year-End Checklist for Photographers.

International Photography Academy

Just a quick note……

The International Photography Academy is offering its Six Level Virtual Class series at a 50% discount. Pre-Covid days, when we could meet in the classroom, this was their Certificate Program. It’s six levels consisting of four classes per level for $97.50. You can sign-up here and since it’s all virtual, you don’t have to be in Chicago!

Live and Learn

How’s it going? It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I’ve been battling a myriad of technical issues for the past 6 months that have prevented me from editing photos and posting. I won’t bore you with the details, but it turns out I needed a new computer with more memory and a faster processor.

My new laptop was delivered today and I was all set to start editing 6 months worth of photos I have sitting in my camera. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it doesn’t have an SD card reader. You know what else it doesn’t have? USB ports. Awesome. What it does have are USB-C ports which means I now I need to find adapters to to hook up an external SD card reader and my external hard drives.

*sigh* Live and learn. How very 2020.

Week 11

What a dumpster fire of a week. It’s Monday night and I’m sitting on my couch listening to the near constant wailing of sirens, just as I’ve done for the past 3 nights.

Chicago is on fire. Literally and figuratively. There are protests all over the city. Mayor Lightfoot instituted an indefinite curfew starting on Saturday night and called in the National Guard. Governor Pritzker has issued a Disaster Proclamation. Public transportation has been suspended. All of the bridges are up. In one 24 hour period over 65,000 calls came into the 911 call center. Neighborhood businesses are being trashed and looted. Grocery stores are closed and boarded up. No neighborhood is safe, not even mine.

My heart is heavy. I cycle through sadness, despair and rage. I don’t feel hopeful for the future.

Rather than sing my song of sorrow, I’m choosing to mute my voice and amplify the voices of some black photographers that I follow on Instagram that are covering the protests. Give them a follow and see the protests through their eyes.

@joshualott
@kevinclaiborne
@phobymo
@coco.butter.shutter
@emackeycreates
@sylviajarrusphoto
@anthonybgeathers
@byalexishunley
@demetrius.freeman
@khickmanphotography

Finally, I highly recommend reading the book “Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America” by Michael Eric Dyson.

Hope everyone is safe.

Cheers,
Bec

Week 10

Week 10 of quarantine took me high with excitement that Illinois is finally going to slowly reopen and a cooking class taught by one my Italian colleagues and then brought me low again with news that Chicago is going to open even slower than the rest of Illinois and a narrowly averted disaster with my AC.

In a fit of optimism, I booked a facial for early June and had my AC serviced. My facial appointment has been cancelled for the third time as Mayor Lightfoot is holding Chicago back from reopening with the rest of Illinois. And my AC unit? Well, the coils froze when somehow the compressor was left running but the blower was not. There was ICE on the OUTSIDE of the unit in the mechanical closet. I spent 36 hours mopping up the melting ice so that it wouldn’t leak through the floor into the unit below me. It sounded like an avalanche was happening when the ice would break apart and fall.

The bright spot of my week was the cooking class with my colleague, Mario. My firm has put together several of these Zoom cooking classes to keep us occupied and entertained during the quarantine. To my surprise, many of the attorneys are worse in the kitchen than I am. One didn’t know the difference between an egg yolk and an egg white. Another needed instructions on how to chop cheese because they didn’t own a grater. It was all very entertaining to me!

As promised, below are the recipes we made. I had a hard time following instructions so mine didn’t turn out quite right, but it was still delicious!

Bucatini Cacio e Pepe (Cheese and Pepper)
– 14 oz. of Bucatini or spaghetti (Mario recommended the following brands (he’s Italian so he would know!): Molisana, Barilla or Garofalo
– 9 oz. of Pecorino Romano cheese (buy the pre-grated kind unless you like grating cheese)
– about 1 tsp (give or take) ground black pepper

Boil water for the pasta. Cook pasta for half the cooking time (it will be finished in pan). Just before draining the pasta, toast the ground pepper over medium heat in a skillet. Drain the pasta in such a way that you keep the pasta water.

Put about 1 cup of the pasta water (I used one ladle scoop) into a bowl and dump the grated cheese into it and stir until melted. Add pasta water as needed, but you don’t want it runny. Once the cheese is melted, put the pasta in the skillet with the toasted pepper and add the cheese sauce. Stir until pasta is finished cooking. You can add pasta water as needed.

Crostata
– 2 egg yolks
– 17.6 oz of all-purpose flour
– 7 oz. of powdered sugar
– 9 oz. of unsalted butter
– grated peel of half a lemon
– jar of favorite marmalade or jar of Nutella
– 2 oz. cacao butter (only if you’re going to use Nutella)

If you’re going to make crostata, make the dough before starting the pasta. It will need to chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Combine the butter and flour in a food processor. (No one on our call had a food processor so we all used blenders. Hilarious and not ideal, but it does eventually work). Transfer the combined butter and flour to a bowl and mix in the powdered sugar. Once mixed, make a canyon (as Mario calls it) and add two egg yolks (that’s the yellow part) and lemon zest. Mix with your hands until the dough is fairly firm and can be rolled into a ball (I had to add a bit more flour, but I also accidentally used an egg white). Cover in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 30ish minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350. Once the dough is chilled, take it out of the fridge and roll it out to the size of your cake pan. (If you want to be fancy, save some of the dough to make stripes on top of the crostata). I don’t have a rolling pin so just put the dough in my cake pan and kneaded it until it was spread evenly. I think maybe the sides are supposed to be a bit higher to hold the toping, but that wasn’t super clear and I’d had half a bottle of wine by this point. If you’re using marmalade, you can dump the marmalade on top of the dough, keeping it away from the edges.

If you’re using Nutella, combine the cacao butter and Nutella together. I used 2 oz of melted butter because I couldn’t find cacao butter in the grocery store. If you’re using cacao butter, you may need to melt it as well. I don’t know what the consistency is but it needs to be able to blend with the Nutella. I used 4 big spoonfuls of Nutella. Once the butter and Nutella are combined, put it onto of the dough in the pan.

If you saved some dough to make stripes on top of the crostata, roll it out and cut into strips and place on top of the crostata. Bake for 20ish minutes.

Mario recommended pairing a light sparkling wine or a young and fruity red wine with the pasta dish. Because I can’t follow instructions, I drank a heavy, spicy red with mine – it was fine. 🙂

Cheers,
Bec

Week 9

Warning: I’m quite hammered writing this post and my firm is to blame (in a good way). We had a Zoom cooking class taught by one of our Italian attorneys. I’ll tell you all about it next week (and share the recipes!), but lemme tell you – it was so fun!

Last week was week nine of the quarantine. Between work and the rainy weather, I didn’t get out much to take pictures. (The pics below were taken with my iPhone for documentary purposes.)

I’ve been ordering my groceries online and having them delivered so I really haven’t left my condo much in the last few weeks aside from my daily walks around the block. I did make a trek to Walgreen’s last weekend just to check out the current TP/disinfectant/hand soap situation. In some weird way it’s become my way of gauging how freaked out I should be and based on the shelves in my local Walgreen’s everyone in Chicago is gonna get Covid-19.

I can’t disinfect my home, but I can still unclog a drain!

Now there’s a running Swiffer products??

I’m back to using bar soap to wash my hands since the only hand soap left on the shelves is clearly the kind that nobody wants. It’s scented and irritates the skin. Also, please leave any good lotion recommendations in the comments, my hands are developing rashes from the constant hand washing.

How are the shelves looking in your areas? Do you have toilet paper, cleaning supplies and hand soap?

Cheers,
Bec

Week 8

Last week was week 8 of working from home/quarantine. As the quarantine drags on and the weather in Chicago gets marginally better, it’s getting harder to social distance from people. More and more people are out and about. The sidewalks, while not exactly crowded, are definitely busier and there are more cars on the roads. I’m still walking in the alleys and trying to get my daily walks in in the early mornings and late evenings.

On the weekends, when I have the time to venture a little further from home, I’ve started exploring the cemeteries. It’s a lot easier to social distance there than on the city streets.

On Saturday I packed up my camera, a water bottle and some snacks and walked the 2 miles to Graceland Cemetery. The walk was much quicker than I expected and the cemetery was a lot smaller than I imagined. As it turns out, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t where I thought I was. I had ended up at St. Bonfice Catholic Cemetery. Chicago has A LOT of cemeteries smack dab in the middle of the city!

Still, it was peaceful and I could walk around without my face mask on. I was really drawn to the trees in the cemetery. The tree in the photograph below is perfectly shaped – almost as if it had been created by painter.

I liked the shape of the tree below as well, with it’s gnarly and twisted branches.

I was disappointed to find that I over exposed both images when I downloaded them. I shoot in manual mode and it was a very bright day so I’m guessing I either couldn’t see the light meter or I misread it when I took these pictures. Either way, I clearly wasn’t abiding by the sunny 16 rule.

Anyone else find some interesting places to explore?

Cheers,
Bec