NAPLES FLORIDA – Day two of the conference. There is a little more daylight in the schedule today so I’m carrying my Alpa TC and a 35mm Schneider lens. Toward the evening I found myself on the beach with the Alpa. Did I say that it’s hard to find an interesting photograph on the beach. Well yes and no. True. But – – – In the few minutes of the “golden hour”, which is usually not an hour – more like 20 minutes, it really doesn’t matter what you point your camera at. When the light arrives, stop what you’re doing and shoot whatever is at hand. Even a beach. I have to relearn this periodically. In landscape light is more important than landscape. Anyway here is the golden hour light etching the beach in Naples.
Magic light trumps banal subject
Earlier in the day I spotted a familiar looking steeple and indeed it was the local United Church of Christ (in round terms the Congregational Churches outside of New England), a sure sign that Naples has been colonized by New Englanders.
NAPLES FLORIDA – Back here again, on a mission that’s unrelated to last week’s board meetings: attending the annual MFDF directors’ conference. Today is the first day of the conference and is thus busy, so I’ve limited myself photo-wise to my iPhone and what I can photograph within an easy walk. I caught this from a boardwalk through a local park with my iPhone. The image is my new lock screen image on my iPhone and I’ve adapted it to serve as one of this blog’s rotating headers. The over cooked quality is what comes out of the iPhone. I could dial it down in Lightroom or Photoshop, but who said this process needs to be serious. The image looks very good on a small screen. It demonstrates (again) that great light trumps every thing else (including limited equipment) when shooting landscape.
Another iPhone image from the top of the bar where I had dinner.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We’re having some painting done. It’s been a few years (actually quite a few ) since we’ve done this. Basically touch ups on trims and moldings – every thing else is fine. Here’s a shot of the work in progress taken with my Alpa Max.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – It snowed yesterday and last night, for the first time in a long while. I put on my snow shoes and spent a couple of hours out in the fields around our house in poor, overcast light. This with my Alpa TC and 35mm Schneider lens.
Hay bale
On this day last year: Flying SVG, a not-quite-scheduled “airline” operating between Barbados and Mustique.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Last month I set my Alpa Max up to demonstrate its “tilt” capacity (the ability to tilt the focus plane to increase the appearance of depth of field) and got an somewhat poorly visualized image of our sundial. It’s snowing today (at last) so I set up trying to do a better of seeing and imagining the image:
BROOKLYN NEW YORK – At last a good day of photography. I met a friend for lunch a Peter Luger, still the best steakhouse in New York (and maybe in the universe). It’s just over the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, so after lunch I explored the bridge and Williamsburg in lovely winter light. Williamsburg is an interesting melange of Lubavitchers, hipsters and young urban types – it has a very good subway connection to midtown. The day was good enough to warrant treatment as a mini-gallery in this post. All images are with my Leica M9 and a 24mm Summilux lens. Lets start with an image of a lone runner in the shadow of the bridge overpass:
Soloist
I’ve done this a lot. For a long time. The distant, solo figure is a recurring theme in my work. Here’s one from 1970 (taken with a
Rollei 2.8 F in Luxembourg):
Solist
Since 1970 the cells in my body have replacement themselves many times; I’ve had a world of experience but I still identify with the lonely, isolated figure. Another thought is captured in the comparison of these two images: my work is often symmetrical with correct prospect (which takes a certain amount of control when shooting with a wide angle lens) or is wildly askew. Anything in between just feels like a mistake to me.
One of the advantages of living in the Northeastern US is the brilliant winter light. It was very much in evidence today giving the graffiti a visual kick.
Fine winter light
Kind of mixed use real estate here, with car repair shops and the like tucked in among buildings undergoing major renovations.
Car repair shop
Here’s the bridge. It wasn’t easy to get this angle. The East River has no accessible waterfront here. I had to trespass through a bridge and tunnel authority parking lot and climb a fence. There are some excellent early 19th century warehouses along here that look like they are in early stages of being renovated.
Williamsburg Bridge
Finally, the scene under the El for the M train back to Manhattan could have been from 1954.
