John’s little bro is tying the knot with his darling girlfriend this September. I volunteered to design the invites, which turned out to be so much fun that I’m still visiting wedding blogs just to ogle all the fantastic design ideas. Joe and Tess had tight budgetary constraints but we managed to come up with something unique and sophisticated…all with 110 invitations costing under $250 total. We cut costs by forgoing letterpress and creating a long-form invite that folds up to become its own envelope. I ordered stickers with a custom monogram of their initials to adhere the invitations closed. We also avoided the need for RSVP cards, envelopes, and postage by having all guests email their RSVP instead. more»

That childhood feeling of giddy Christmas morning glee is not easily replicated in the world of adults. These days, my ‘neath-the-tree goodies are of a decidedly more responsible sort: socks, books, and cold hard cash. The closest I come to recapturing that “did-I-get-the-Barbie-ice-cream-shoppe?!” anticipation comes in the form of long-lost rolls of film packed with good times and fabulous long-forgotten moments. Behold! Chinatown dudes! Lonely Red Hook chair! Ravenous twin goats! What more could I ask for?

Glenmere Mansion, whose photos I posted here in May and are now in the July issue of Robb Report, is one of few properties that has really stuck with me over time. If there’s one thing I love about a resort, it’s the feeling that each space is unique and has something special to offer. Glenmere accomplishes that in spades. The property also won me over with 24/7 snacking stations (there’s always room for scones!), a gorgeous library stocked with art books ranging from the Impressionist greats to Jeff Koons, and bottomless brunch Bellinis using—and this is important!—real peach purée. So, apparently, the way to my heart is no secret: endless proportions of food, booze, and art!

I’ve never been much of a fish gal. I prefer furry things, and underwater creatures aren’t exactly the snuggling type. But I must admit that after speaking with Okeanos Aquascaping co-owner and super-passionate aquarium lover Martin Schapira, I totally get the whole underwater world appeal. Granted, I’d probably have to settle for something more fishbowl-like as opposed to Okeanos’ shockingly expansive (and expensive!) aquariums, but alas, I do have a newfound appreciation for my little undersea friends.

When I showed up at this penthouse on West 72nd Street across from my favorite corner of Riverside Park, I thought, “Oh, that’s a nice terrace.” Little did I know that I was standing on one of four expansive terraces including a rooftop putting green. Designed by Martha Stack, the pied-à-terre had a rare (for space-strapped Manhattan, at least) appreciation for the outdoors, my favorite of which is captured by the mounted four-foot bluefish that presides over the sexy blue office. more»

Writing the same article twice is definitely a test in creative mettle. Luckily I had eight hours of uninterrupted work time in the form of a CDG-to-JFK flight to knock out my second piece about the One&Only Cape Town for Robb Report’s 2010 Best of the Best issue. It was even enough time to write an article about the Four Seasons Resort Seychelles for the same issue. Such productivity! And I still managed to watch the barely-entertaining, often-embarrassing duo of Ricky Gervais movies so thoughtfully chosen by American Airlines. more»

We turned my final submission for the Kinne Research Fellowship at Columbia into a big, beautiful book, published by Blurb. Jackie edited the original entries for an easier, more photo-focused flow (or because she thinks I talk too much). The electronic book can be viewed/downloaded on issuu, and if you want the unbridled, even-more-enthusiastic version, browse the original posts here. Also, definitely check out the interactive map that outlines the entire six-week trip after the jump. Now we just have to complete the second session in Mexico City. Fingers crossed we carve the time out this summer! more»

John and I rented a convertible and drove up to Vermont to check out the Chalet cottage at Twin Farms. Never mind the fact that it rained, sleeted, and flurried during various times throughout our trip (no wonder Alamo offered us a car upgrade at such a generous price!), we still had a lovely time at the world-class resort that was originally the vacation estate of literary legend Sinclair Lewis.  I will admit that I’m not a huge fan of not being able to chose my own meals but the gorgeous Vermont countryside—even through dense fog—simply cannot be topped. John claims his favorite state is now Vermont (no doubt, cheese and maple syrup tastings had an influence on this declaration). I’m holding true to Texas but, damn, those verdant rolling hills do come close. more»

John and I took a mini-holiday last month to check out a new resort upstate called Glenmere Mansion. The owners discovered a rundown Tuscan-style mansion in Chester, NY, about four years ago and have now turned it into a classical-meets-modern resort, complete with a Miami-inspired pool, authentic Italianate cortile, and an enviable display of their own art collections (hello, Rauschenberg lithograph!). Admittedly, we brought the average guest age down by about 20 years. (At one point we felt so out of place that John likened us to Mac and Dee in the country-club-Vicodin-selling episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.) more»

I’d been holding off on posting anything not Seychelles-related in an attempt at some sort of cohesion. So now that that’s over and done with, I can finally post this article I wrote about Anthony Lawrence-Belfair’s custom furniture and new fabric collection for the April issue of Robb Report. I also shot the photos, some of which were previously posted on here (and some of which also ran in NY Spaces).

I only spent a few hours at Maia Luxury Resort & Spa—glorious though they were. During my site inspection, I was taken to the villa at the very top of the granite peak on which the resort is located. It was rather amusing as my guide and I sat on the edge of the outdoor bathtub, silently watching the sun ebb its way toward the horizon for a good three minutes. He didn’t seem to think it was anything out of the ordinary though so I can only deduce that two strangers in a tub is a pretty common occurrence over there. more»

The first stop on my trip was Desroches Island. It was, in many ways, my favorite stop. There was the plentitude of water sports (snorkeling with sharks! I caught my first fish! hydrobike?!), the four-bedroom villa of which there weren’t enough nights to test each bed, and—the real kicker—the willingness of the staff to go running with me at 6 AM. Now that’s dedication to your guests. And damn, we don’t have that kind of humidity in New York, so I must say that they kind of kicked my ass too. more»

Onward with the Seychelles! My final stop was North Island where I stayed in Villa 11, the 5,000-square-foot behemoth that led to my intense claustrophobia upon returning home to our one-bedroom apartment. (Incidentally, I had always considered our place to be quite large, especially by New York standards.) If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say the villa’s deck alone was probably equal to five of our apartments, which is why I spent most of my time there. It’s also why an unnecessarily high percentage of my photos from this little island feature that spot as well. More to come as I’ve done a dreadful job of chronological organization and this is by far not the end of my film (well, digital) trail. more»

It’s a shame that I am posting these Seychelles images out of chronological order; it would be so lovely to tell a mini-story of my trip. But Four Seasons’ images had to be done pronto despite being the third property I visited, and for whatever reason I was aching to edit Fregate Island Private’s images next.

As the name implies, Fregate is a private island. The resort has just sixteen villas. The day we choppered in from Mahe was probably the clearest and bluest I’ve ever seen. Lucky me, I got to co-pilot (sitting next to the pilot while gaping at the view makes you co-pilot, right?). At this point I also find it necessary to attempt to explain the colors on these islands. They are too vibrant to be called brilliant. To put it another way: I’m not one to sit at a table and eat a three-course meal without at least the company of a good book or New York magazine, but here, the entertainment is free and it lasts all day and it never—NEVER—gets boring. more»

Just returned from two glorious work- and fun-filled weeks in the Seychelles, where I visited five islands and six resorts. First up is the Four Seasons Resort Seychelles, which opened last February. I’ll be swimming in photos for the next week or so…more to come! more»

I’ve been spending a lot of time working with the good folks over at Anthony Lawrence-Belfair. Photographing their new Island fabric collection has been a breath of fresh air this winter. Somehow it seems every time I go over to their West 23rd Street showroom, we’re experiencing some sort of post-apocalyptic weather, and spending time photographing this beachy-themed collection has given me a much needed escape from reality. Oh, and their custom furniture is so insanely comfy that I nearly fell asleep while taking five at a recent photo shoot. more»

Every January we like to put together a little collection of our favorite photos from the year before–a Lion in Oil annual, if you will. And with every new year we vow to top the year before. Well, we did our fair share of traveling this year, and if we want to raise the ante for 2010, we’ve definitely got our work cut out for us. Anyway, our book arrived yesterday and we are thrilled. It’s our prettiest one yet! You can take a look at a digital version on Blurb (where you can also purchase said book).

The second piece I wrote for Robb Report’s February travel issue is this feature about the new villa suites in the under-construction Octavius Tower at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. I had really wanted to get out there to see them in person but deadlines and holidays collided and it wasn’t in the cards. I wonder: which of the villas would I have chosen to stay in? I do love me some floor-to-ceiling marble, so perhaps the Greek-inspired Constantine Villa. As I always say, it’s not a bathroom without an Esmerelda onyx-lined bathtub surrounded by Doric columns. more»

The February issue of Robb Report likes to rub it in our East Coast faces that there are warmer places in the world right now. Though I’m not doing much traveling these days, I did write a couple of pieces for the magazine’s annual travel issue: the one above about the first American globe maker (not at all the snooze-fest one might imagine), and another about three new villa suites that just opened at the Caesars Place in Vegas (coming shortly).

We’re off to Austin for the holidays (sans our rein-kitty, Li’l Frank, unfortunately). Best wishes to all and we’ll see you in the new year!

My write-up about the appropriately-named UFO chandelier from Dutch designer Brian Rasmussen and Italian lighting studio SID ran in the December issue of Robb Report. Each year, in preparation for the holidays, the magazine compiles an outlandish list of insanely expensive gifts for their Ultimate Gift Guide. The wildest part of this year’s issue though is that one of the ultimate gifts was actually purchased: the $1 million duo of a ‘54 and ‘11 Mercedes. Gosh, and all I wanted this year was an electric toothbrush.

Check out a more readable version of the Las Vegas home tour I wrote for Robb Report’s November 2009 issue here. more»

Freelancing can be a tough gig. We’re not complaining—we love our bosses, working in our jammies, and meeting new people all the time. But the flip side of that coin is the lack of 401Ks, sick days, paid vacation, and, most of all, group health care coverage. Luckily we’re young and healthy so the risk we take in not having health insurance is considerably lower than some other people who aren’t so lucky in our country and really have few or no options. This issue has been in the forefront of a lot of our minds for many years, and it is finally in the limelight nationally, so when we learned about Robbie and Robert Bailey’s Face 4 Reform project, we didn’t hesitate to volunteer. Bailey Photography’s project shows the faces of the vast and diverse pool of Americans who are uninsured. They’ll continue with these portraits until health insurance reform passes. Check out their fantastic project (complete with our mugs!) on their Faces 4 Reform website.

Super-talented John managed to get Lion in Oil a nice little shout-out in the new book Designing a Digital Portfolio. The author, Cynthia L. Baron, contacted John several months ago about his myriad portfolios and records of work, including his gracefulspoon web site and online portfolios on issuu. John does an eloquent job dissecting the future of the portfolio on his own blog, so I’ll just let it suffice to quote Baron in saying “Locke’s creativity is not debatable.” True that! more»

This feature I wrote covering spas from around the US is a bit of a downer for me. The layout: gorgeous. The properties: amazing. The writing: if pressed, I’d have to go with pretty damn good. The problem? It was scheduled for the October issue of Vacation Homes magazine that never made it to newsstands before shuttering for good. Although it may never see the light of publication, at least I can revel in its glory on LIO. more»

This is the piece I did for Robb Report magazine covering the Four Seasons and Grand Wailea pools in Maui, both of which opened (or reopened) over the summer. I plan to look at this photo every day for the next, oh, six months to combat the imminently approaching NYC cold. Link to the online article is here.

I was flattered when an editor at Argentinian newspaper Diario Perfil contacted me over the summer about featuring my photography in their home supplement. The article came out last weekend, and I seriously blushed when I read it (thanks to my Spanish degree!). I’ll humbly skip translating it here and those who are dying to read it can try out their own habilidades de la traducción. But I do love this last sentence: Por tierra, aire o mar, no hay destino que se escape de la lente y la curiosidad de Jackie Caradonio :: By land, air or sea, there is no destination that can escape the lens and curiosity of Jackie Caradonio!

How exciting for John and I to once again work together on a project. It’s been a long year (plus) of separate endeavors so this competition for a mural was a long overdue collaboration. Surrounding the construction of the Freedom Tower, we conceived Skyscape. Here’s the project description:

What makes New York’s skyline so powerful is not the skyscrapers themselves, but the void between and around them, the vibrant hues of sky that hug their every angle. Skyscape focuses on that negative space in a site-specific work that combines photographs of the space above the construction site taken from surrounding boroughs over the course of a single day. The idea is that, not only will our skyline change dramatically with the addition of the Freedom Tower, but the shape of the sky itself, the space it encompasses, and therefore, the relationship between the buildings, the sky, and us will change. We still recognize the buildings’ forms, but they become the void—the sky is now the subject. more»

It’s great to be back after a post-graduate road trip through the desert Southwest and northern Mexico. After a while, the wide open spaces had me longing for the confined claustrophobia of the city. I walked or drove through five international border stations, saw the sun rise over the Oscuras Mountains, toured a missile park and decommissioned nuclear silo, walked the Spiral Jetty, dreamed of lightning in central New Mexico, swam in the great Salt Lake, slept in a utopia, sped through a dystopia, shopped with polygamous Mormons, and hiked next to a legal brothel. All in all, I clocked over 6,000 miles in six weeks. You can read about the trip origins and research goals here and, because there’s still so much information to parse, you can follow the progress here.

Continuing the extravaganza of written work is a home gallery I did for Robb Report about Boffi, an Italian kitchen and bathroom manufacturer. I find it much too difficult to gauge the quality of a kitchen or bathroom system without experiencing it firsthand and so decided to visit Boffi’s booth at ICFF back in May. After about three hours of meandering through/getting sidetracked by vendor after fantastic vendor, I finally realized Boffi was only participating “in spirit” so to speak (in other words, solely within the confines of their SoHo showroom). I shuffled on over to Greene Street and made it just in time to catch the end of their event—and one of the last glasses of champagne. In the end, it was definitely worth sorting out the confusion though; the products were much more amazing in person than I ever could have gathered from photos or renderings.