If this is the first time to my blog and you are scrolling through past posts or you have been following my blog for a while you may be wondering if this blog is about food or wedding photography. I love both! Ultimately what my blog is about are stories, family stories to be specific. Families often start with marriage and the rich traditions celebrated at weddings, but there are continuing stories, parts of a whole that help define who we are as individuals as a family and as a community.

Thanksgiving is one of my wife and I’s favorite holidays, it involves food and family and time to share in each others company without obvious distraction. Maebelle Carden or Nonnie, as she is know by our family, is Chrystal’s paternal grandmother and a proper southern lady. My wife, Chrystal, can not remember a thanksgiving with out Nonnie cooking from scratch, with the use of only her memory, pecan pies in Durham, North Carolina. A particularly southern dish (pecan’s are widely grown in North Carolina and Georgia) for a particularly southern family. In recent years Chrystal and I have been celebrating Thanksgiving in New York and Chrystal has been following the tradition of her grandmother in baking pecan pie.

Several years ago Chrystal’s mom decided to ask Nonnie for the recipe and it was written down for the first time, see below. This year I decided to document the process at Thanksgiving and will have further images when we visit Nonnie around Christmas time.

Nonnie in her Garden, circa 1930′s, Photo by Robert Carden.

Chrystal’s pecan pie this Thanksgiving, it tasted as good as it looks!

Nonnie’s original recipe transcribed by her for Chrystal and Chrystal’s mom a few year back, please feel free to share!

Pecan’s picked just two weeks ago and fedex’d to our home from North Carolina

Brown and Granulated Sugar

Fresh pastured eggs from Union Square Market

Karo Syrup, my niece Julia, visiting from Vermont, assisted in positioning of spoon for this photograph.

Vanilla Extract

Butter

Nonnie last year in her current garden!

Chrystal pours the pies in our kitchen.

Myself, Nonnie and Chrystal, in Durham, around the holidays last year.

I recently had the opportunity to follow the New York Red Bulls around, check out the stadium and rub elbows with some of the players on media day.  I was surprised to find out that several live just a few doors down from me, including Tim Ream, a defender who also plays for the US national team.   The quality of the Major League Soccer continues to rise, which is evident throughout the entire New York Red Bulls establishment.  A new stadium, completed last year in Harrison, New Jersey, now houses home grow US talent as well as attracts top talent from players who have made the switch from top European clubs such as Ajax and FC Barcelona.    The Red Bulls are currently posed second to the top in the Eastern Conference and have an excellent opportunity to challenge for the MLS cup.   See the full story and additional images on h-MAG.com.

The multi-lingual Thierry Henry answers questions in French, Spanish and English equally well for the international press.  Henry, who joined the Red Bulls at the beginning of the season, has played for AS Monaco, Juventus, Arsenal, FC Barcelona and has a world cup with the French National Team.

Henry seems to work just as hard in practice as I’ve seen him on the field during his days at Arsenal and Barcelona.   Here, Henry steps in front of a pass between, Juan Agudelo from Columbia (#17) and Jan Gunnar Solli from Norway (#8).

Mehdi Ballouchy from Morocco (#10) awaits a pass.

Tim Ream (#5), my neighbor, originally from Missouri carries around Mehdi

Ream answers questions posed by our writer.

Greg Sutton, goal keeper (#24) performs stretching after practice, Greg is a fellow Canadian.

Dwayne De Rosario (#11) also a Canadian, here he dribbles the ball on his head while heading off the field after the practice session.

Hans Backe, the Coach, greets Sharon Henry, the writer I worked with for hMag on the Story, Backe also lives a few blocks from me.

Rafa Marques (#4) played for Barcelona before coming to the Red Bulls this year.

John Rooney (#16) garnered lots of attention from the UK media as his the brother Wayne Rooney plays for Manchester United and the English National team.

If you have never had ramps it may be easier to describe what they don’t taste like then how they do:   savory like garlic but without the spicy bite, springiness of a green onion (scallion) but much more pungent in taste and onion-y like a leek but not bitter.  Smelling ramps in the air of my home right now I think food writer Jane Snow got it right, “like fried green onions with a dash of funky feet”.

Ramps grow wild in the shade of an undistributed forest and that is often how they are harvested.  They are native to the eastern seaboard of North America, growing in cooler mountain areas of Georgia and the Carolina’s and the warmer areas of the far north of the Maritimes in Canada.   You can find them in the Union Square Market this time every year for about 3-4 weeks.  We are just at the tail end of the season now.   All but the stringy roots are edible, from the sweet white bulb, to the more bitter red stem and then on through the leaves.  Wash well, especially if you are eating the leaves, as small critters like slugs can crawl deep into the folds (extra protein?).

Use the bulb and the red stem similar to the way you would use garlic and scallions.  The leaves can be chopped and added to a salad fresh, or you can cook the leaves like spinach and add them to an omelet or perhaps a soup.    Although you can compare ramps to garlic, scallion and leek, they are distinct in there own right and certainly a umami treat this time of year.

My favorite way to enjoy ramps:

Ramp Omelet (makes two)

-5-6 Whole wild ramps

-Half a medium tomato- diced

-6 eggs (2 yolks removed), I recommend Norwich organic eggs which are pasture raised , Union Square on Fridays

-Mild fresh Goat Cheese, I recommend LynnHaven, Union Square on Wednesdays

-Sea Salt and Freshly ground pepper

Wash the ramps well, remove root from the bulb and finely chop the bulb and thick part of the stem.  Bring a 12″ cast iron pan to medium heat, add a table spoon of Olive Oil and add chopped ramp bulb and stems immediately to keep the olive oil from smoking.  Saute until slightly translucent, add the julienne ramp leaves and tomatoes until wilted.  Remove ramps and tomatoes from the pan and salt lightly.   Take the six eggs and add two to three table spoons of cold water, beat lightly for 10-15 seconds add cooked ramps and tomatoes.  Re-oil the pan and add half of the omelet mix to the pan moving the egg with the spatula consistently to get omelet like consistency (this is not an official cooking term!)  Remove from pan, crumble goat cheese over omelet and add freshly ground pepper to taste.  This recipe also work well with thyme, but you may not get the more pure taste of the ramps.

Do you enjoy ramps, please post a comment if you have an experience or recipe to share.  If your feeling more more for dessert, try Nonnie’s Pecan Pie recipe I posted in December.

My complicated set up!  This trunk, located in my studio/office, is my wife’s great grandmother’s original, circa 1920′s.

The release of this website marks an important milestone in both my business and personal life .   It was three years ago on April 2nd, 2008 that I left my full time position in finance at a global pharmaceutical company to venture into following a life long passion of forming my own photography business.  With that change came the vision of R Wagner Photography, and along with all the couples, families and professional’s I have worked with thus far, this website is the incarnation and reflection of that vision.

Taking on the challenge of starting R Wagner Photography has not always been easy and there were and are continuing growing pains.  When I decided to make the career switch, I was spoiled with my first three weddings being in Southern France, India and Hawaii.  At the beginning, I did not realize the level of commitment and investment of creativity, time and effort that it would require to get me where I wanted to go.  Slowly, photo by photo, inspired by the couples I am very fortunate enough to work with everyday, my dream is being hammered out into reality.

When I first started out as a photographer I was hesitant to let people know my recent background was a career in corporate finance.  Who wants an accountant photographing their wedding?  Accountants aren’t typically known for their creativity, right?   What I came to understand is that my natural, creative self, paired with the years of experience and training in management in the corporate world, gave me a unique set of skills.  I came to not fear my background but embrace my strengths while continuing to work on my weaknesses.   I learned that my unique background (for a photographer) allowed me to excel in communication, decision making and organization, which all served me well in my new business venture.  My background also helps me connect more deeply and meaningful to the couples that I work with, many of whom are professionals working in a similar environment as my previous background.  Transitioning between careers made me quickly learn that there are many transferable skills and none more valuable than how to be flexible.

From the beginning of my venture as a photographer I have not been alone.  Many couples experiencing their own journey have trusted me with responsibility of taking part and documenting their stories.   There have also been numerous wedding professionals that have inspired and have entrusted me with their projects or were patiently there to support and listen.  Above all, my wife, Chrystal, has always been there.  She was the first to encourage me to follow this path.   Many of you have meet her at meetings and various events and, watched her smile while tireless running around doing all that is necessary to get a small business off the ground.  Through these three world wind years, we got engaged, became husband and wife, moved into a new home and started a business!  It is through these struggles and triumphs that I am better able to relate and serve the community to which I am apart of.

2011 will bring me as close as a few blocks out the front door, to varied corners of Manhattan, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Vermont, Italy and to places and people I have not yet envisioned…the chance to meet new people, have varied experiences and to embrace the uncertain is what drives me each day!

An image from one of my first weddings, Donna and David in Provence, France, 2007.  I love the expression on Donna’s face and David’s positive body language with hand in air.

One of my first published images, Effel Tower, published in Black and White Magazine, 2004.  In 2008 a Italian painter from Italy whom studied at the Accademia in Florence saw this image in the publication and used it as inspiration for one of his master works.  Interestingly, I had lived and studied in Florence just steps from the Accademia!

Chrystal and I on our wedding day, July 2009, Greensboro, North Carolina.  Image by my brother Tim Wagner.

Me working at the Bristol-Meyers Squibb office in Rueil-Malmaison (just outside Paris) in 2006.  Photograph by Chrystal who was visiting me.

My wife’s twin niece’s in North Carolina, 2007.  Many of my first clients where family and friends.

Women in rice market, Mumbai, India, 2007.   One of the many portraits I took while working and traveling to more than 30 countries in 3 years.

Mangosteen Fruit (‘The Queen of all Fruit’), Bangkok, Thailand, 2006.  One my early follies in over using photoshop when editing.   As Denis Reggie (an early inspiration to my practice) recently said in the New York Times: “Photoshop is the Salt and Pepper, not the steak”, see his thoughts on great wedding photography here.