Brian Mullins Photography Blog

As you’ve probably seen (if you’ve been keeping up with my blog), I end up photographing quite a variety of things on a daily basis. Thursday was no different as I went to Robin’s house (who I met on Memorial day @ Veteran Park) to photograph a story about figs. Yes, figs. My experience with figs was limited to my childhood, and those figs were of the newton variety so this was and interesting assignment.

I was amazed at how many different kinds and colors of figs there are. Silly me, I figured a fig is a fig, to use a figure of speech (ok, ok, no more bad puns). Robin picked the figs we photographed right off her trees and brought them inside. What a treat! They were ripe, sweet and sticky. I was afraid to eat during the photoshoot as a sticky fingerprint on a lens doesn’t good photography make, or so Yoda says. Here’s a shot from that session - I’ll take full credit for stylizing the food but Danielle and Robin take top prize for the Hydrangea & fig leaf floral arrangment.

Cary held their annual Lazy Daze festival this weekend.  I guess we should be thankful it was only 100 degrees outside (With a really nice wind blowing, it was quite a nice day).  If you’ve never been it is quite a fun event.  Local and not so local vendors pitch tents and sell everything from food to fine art photography to pottery to chairs fashioned from branches.  In addition to the vendors, there was also 3 stages with live music, a rock climbing wall and my favorite, Pirates!  They performed live sword fighting and also has a women whipping spaghetti noodles out of a blind-folded pirates mouth.  Yes, the swords and the whip were real and the sounds were something I just can’t describe accurately in this blog entry.  My hats off to the performers who smiled and enjoyed themselves despite being dressed in pirate clothes in the heat.

Here’s one of the action sequences I shot during the swordfight:

I do like how some titles just get your attention. I usually try not to use similar titles, but this one just screamed (pardon the pun) for it.

I visited the fine folks at Lucky 32 today - on assignment for a Cary Magazine restaurant profile. Andy (General Manager, Mark (Marketing Director) and Jay (Executive Chef) were all on hand to answer our questions, provide some gorgeous meals to photograph and give us more knowledge of their operation. One thing I was not aware of, Lucky 32 really prides itself on working with local farmers to get all produce. It never really occurred to me, before this, of where other restaurants actually get their fresh produce from. I always assumed it was shipped in from some other place. Anyway, their chicken dishes also use completely organic chicken (Sorry Jay, you explained it much more eloquently then I can hope to here) that are, essentially, immunization free (or something along those lines).

We spent over 2 hours photographing, talking and learning about this great restaurant. I, for sure, will be going back with my wife for dinner one night soon. Here’s one of my favorites from the session: