Merry Christmas

A Christmas cheer from a story I shot for Martha Stewart Living.

I heart Brooklyn

I've been spending a lot of time walking around the city, and I am heartened by all the ceaseless life going on around me. On my way home from the print lab yesterday, I saw a sky right out of a Turner painting, a man aloft on a crane painting a massive mural of flying birds on the side of a building, and a young man singing soulfully on the subway platform. Nothing but unexpected beauties.

Love letter to Brooklyn

In a dreary corner of Brooklyn, the artist Stephen Powers, also known by his tag name ESPO, painted fragments of poetic phrases in graphic letters that demand to be read. The work is entitled "Love Letter to Brooklyn" and took 13 days to paint. I love seeing this every time I take the subway to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, its cheery message splashed extravagantly across a dull parking garage.

Getaway Dream

Address Is Approximate from The Theory on Vimeo.

I used to live in California and still dream of the West Coast sometimes. This wonderful video captures my getaway dream so perfectly. Amazing work.

A liquid morning

After days of brilliant sunshine comes a soft and liquid morning, where droplets of rain cling precariously to arching branches and damp fallen leaves carpet the ground. I wish there more autumn days like this before winter sets in.

The Dutch photo collector, Erik Kessels, whose installation at the Foam photography gallery in Amsterdam makes an overwhelming point about the mind-numbing age of infinite Flickr uploads in which we live, points out rightfully that we are "drowning in pictures of the experiences of others." And I am guilty of adding to the deluge with these photos of my walk around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today.

Autumn Light

We've had the most brilliant autumn days this week. Mornings come with the light slanting on the wall, moving slowly through the day until an abrupt darkness falls in the late afternoon. The streets in my neighborhood are aflame with every shade of crimson and gold. I love this time of year in all its melancholic tone.

Bringing Nature Home

This is the  reason for my lack of posts in the last couple of months. I've been hard at work putting my book together. Bringing Home Nature will be published by Rizzoli next April. I just went over the first proofs with the book designer, and everything looks great, with some minor adjustments. It's been a long haul, but the end is finally in sight. I'm looking forward to holding the actual book in my hands.

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from the foreword written by Deborah Needleman, which sums up the idea of the book:

Ngoc’s book is a sonnet to the seasons. It rejoices in the beauties particular to each, and to the immense joy to be had from paying witness to those changes, and of bringing its fruits into the home. That is the message of this book, made abundantly clear through Ngoc’s text and the effect of her poetic photographs. But underlying that, her pictures also reveal her expansive appreciation for the variety of ways flowers have been used in different cultures and times in history.