Thursday, July 22, 2010



Here's afunny storythat happened some years ago when I first started to shoot food.


I was called on by an editor of some popular "rag sheets" that you find at the checkout counters in the supermarkets. They wanted to do a story about frog legs and asked if I had any in stock. I didn't but living here in South Florida at that time provided no problem .

A local fish market had a supplier who hunted frogs in the Everglades, big ones too and that afternoon I got some of the best. I prepared them myself, some I had to eat of course...and photographed them as well. Sending up the film..(ah the good old film days when I wasn't in front of the computer all day for every thing I now do, when I dropped off my film,had lunch with others while we waited the 3 hours or so,had food,beer/wine and talked about everything, about being and having a HUMAN touch ).. excuse me I digress... anyway, they selected this and a verticle shot as well to see how it would lay out.

I had asked about the story but they were vague, she was simply the photo editor doing her research etc... about a month later I am in a local super market and I spot my shot very nicely reproduced with all appropriate bylines, and paid for of course, under the headline.. " Scientists have found why the French make such great lovers" semi quoted here...why ,the story asks..because they eat Frogs legs and frogs have been found to feed on flies, the aphrodisiac ones that they pass on in their meat.Since the French are known to eat them...VOILA..cum eere ma cheri!!! Now I may be French and on occasion eat a couple, I always thought it was my je ne sait qua ...

Now a couple of months go by and I am at the photo show in NYC at Javits. I go to a local market and there in another newspaper I see the shot again, this time..." Man sues famous restaurant in France over a heart attack, when his diner of frogs legs gets up and dances in his plate." wow...Fred Astair and Kermit rolled into one...

Both stories in separate papers used this image, created in my kitchen supplied from the Everglades. Now, I know about freedom of the press and artistic license but this was absolute parody or should have been.