Drawing was a terribly important part of science until the mid-19th century. Without photography, scientists, particularly in the life sciences, had to document what they saw with painstaking illustrations. The clarity and "realness" of photographs eventually relegated scientific drawing to a hobby, but it didn't happen overnight. Photographers working at the microscopic scale had to devise new emulsion chemistries and types of equipment to capture clear images of tiny things. Leading the charge was Auguste-Adolphe Bertsch, who worked to overcome any challenge that scientists threw at him. Unfortunately, he died during leftist social unrest in France in 1871. As...
Melvin Sokolsky was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side during the lean years of the prewar era. Here he witnessed the entire spectrum of the human condition played out across a tough and tight-knit community. This experience was countered by a universe of visual riches found in the museums and books he regularly devoured. Melvin spent his days framing and logging precise mental and emotional images long before he had a camera to capture them. At age ten he began taking pictures using a box camera, though he was frustrated by his inability to create prints that...
From Serious Eats All right, Top Chef junkies. Listen up. Your jonesin' days are over for the time being. Tom, Padma, Gail, and the rest of the resident and guest experts have been joined by 17 aspiring top toques in New York City. Based on tonight's first episode, it's going to be a doozy of a season. My favorite introductory quote came from Daniel, a twenty-something chef from Babylon, New York: "I was so unnoticed for the longest time." You're 25, dude, how long could you have gone unnoticed? What's interesting to me is how quickly casual viewers like me...
Photo by Scott Bourne I talk about digital photography here most of the time, but I’ve recently been scanning some old photos from the 1930s (the photo above is NOT one of them) and it gave me the idea to talk about preserving old pictures. I think the best way to preserve old photos is to scan them and then make a copy of the scan onto both hard disk and DVD. Additionally, making a print is, always has been, and always will be a viable archival method for preserving old photos. Beyond that, if you want to store either...
This summer hasn't been too brutal, so there's no reason not to turn on the AC and make candies. These little truffles are addictive and delicious. To personalize them, you can use whichever spices you prefer to flavor the ganache. If you use milk chocolate instead of dark, however, you'll need to adapt the recipe by using a 1:2.5 ratio of heavy cream to chocolate instead of the 1:2 ratio specified in this recipe for use with approximately 62% chocolate. The recipe follows: Cinnamon Marzipan Sichuan Peppercorn Truffles (adapted from Chocolates & Confections by Peter P. Greweling) 4 tsp...
