Month: December 2010

Monday December 20, 2010

Post author By Woody
Post date Saturday December 25, 2010

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a casual dinner at home in the kitchen with two friends of long standing, Bill and Bunny Beekman. Here’s Bunny Captured with my Leica M9 and the 35mm Summilux II lens, my new favorite lens on this camera.

The out of focus portions of the image are particularly interesting. I shot Bunny at f/2.8, where the lens has the creamy out of focus character typical of the pre-aspheric Leica lenses; wide open at f/1.4 it has a more edgy character typical of the current generation of highly corrected fast lenses. The following is an example. In effect this is two lenses in one – how it draws the out of focus portions depends on f stop.

On this date last year: Gallery in San Miguel.

Tags Events and holidays, Food and wine

Events and holidays Family and friends Portrait

Sunday December 19, 2010

Post author By Woody
Post date Friday December 24, 2010

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Holiday season continues. This is our friend Chuck Klein at John and Anne Herrmann’s Holiday party.

On this day one year ago: Dallas Fort Worth Airport.

Dallas Fort Worth

Tags Events and holidays, Parties

Events and holidays Family and friends

Saturday December 18, 2010

Post author By Woody
Post date Thursday December 23, 2010

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A family evening. Our son, Alexander, and his fiance, Laura, had holiday party. Here are Maria and our daughter, Francesca, looking at ideas for bridesmaids dresses online. Panasonic GF1 and 14mm pancake lens.

On this day last year: Lipstick Building and friends, shot in infrared
Third Avenue

Tags Parties

Home Landscape Out my window

Friday December 17, 2010

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday December 22, 2010

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’ve taken advantage of a Hasseblad offer the upgrade my H3D-39 to the latests H4D-60. That’s a medium format system with 60 megs of resolution. I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with a piece of equipment called HTS 1.5 and the new camera – it adds the ability to tilt and shift lenses (as one can on a view camera). The HTS 1.5 provides 18mm of shift in either direction. So theoretically f you do three images, one centered, one with the lens shifted all the way left and the other shifted all the way right, in portrait orientation, and stitch them, you end up with a frame in landscape orientation with a perfect 2×3 aspect ratio and pixel dimensions of 12,762 x 8,488, for a whopping 108 megs. Nice but does this actually work?

The image below was captured with the Hasselblad 100mm lens and the HTS 1.5 – three images with the HTS 1.5 shifted as above and stitched in Photoshop.

Out our window

Here’s a 1:1 crop from the left side of the image – the Robert Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough Bridge) at night.

This is very impressive – I’m going to have some fun with this thing.

On this day last year: Shopping on Fifth Avenue.

Tags New York, Night, Night phography

Events and holidays Interior

Thursday December 16, 2010

Post author By Woody
Post date Tuesday December 21, 2010

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The New York chapter of the Commanderie de Bordeaux had its Holiday dinner (featuring an ’82 Palmer) at the Union Club. Here are some musicians at the event. My Panasonic GF1 is getting a workout this week – it’s discrete and pocketable, and has ok low-light performance (as you may have noticed I work only in available light). The Union Club is the grandest of Delano & Aldrich’s New York structures; in situations like this I like to shoot wide to take advantage of the context. Shot with a 14mm pancake lens on the GF1.

Music at the Union Club

On this day one year ago: infrared image of Citicorp Center.

Tags New York, Parties

Landscape Street Urban

Wednesday December 15, 2010

Post author By Woody
Post date Monday December 20, 2010

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Waldorf Astoria. Here’s a Wikipedia article on this deco landmark. The photograph is taken with my Leica M9 and my new 36mm Summilux II lens, with a neutral density filter to permit shooting at f 1.4 in daylight. More work on out of focus images. The overexposed area in the lower right is intentional – dramatic overexposure can result in a banding artifact with some digital cameras – I removed some banding in this image in Photoshop.

Home of the famous salad