SARATOGA SPRINGS NEW YORK – Still upstate. Francesca finished the bar exam today and Saratoga has given us about all that it has to offer. Here are a few last details from the Adelphi Hotel taken with my iPhone.
At the Adelphi
On this day one year ago: Lemarti’s Camp. In Kenya. I never really quite knew where we were here. A bit northwest of the beaten track. I couple of hours by bush plane from Nairobi, after meeting Maria after her climb of Kilimanjaro.
GLENS FALLS and SARATOGA SPRINGS NEW YORK – In Utah the 24th of July is a state holiday, celebrated sort of as a second Fourth of July. It commemorates the date on which Brigham Young arrived at the mouth of Immigration Canyon and said “This is the place”.
But we’re in upstate New York, not Utah, so no fireworks. We drove up to Glens Falls today to vist a lovely museum, the Hyde Collection. This is an excellent small collection of important European art assembled by two sisters in the early part of the 20th Century, and a terrific collection of Tiffany Glass. Apologies for the long post but this was an interesting day.
Here’s the central space in the collection captured with my Leica M9 and 24mm Summicron lens; two frames stitched in PTGui Pro.
Hyde Collection
The collection (which by itself was worth a drive up here) includes a current show by an artist named Stephen Knapp who does light painting creating colors with precisely shaped and oriented pieces of polarized glass. Taken with the same rig.
Stephen Knapp
Back in Saratoga Springs I had some fun with my iPhone. Here’s a quilt in the Victorian pile of lumber that calls itself the Adelphi Hotel. It’s interesting because it is very similar to a quilt that we have in Connecticut – a quilt that we bought a church rummage sale and then spent a year and a fairly serious amount of money having restored. I’ll shoot it in Connecticut when we’re there next weekend and you’ll see the resemblance.
Quilt
More fun with the iPhone in Saratoga:
Wandering Cowboy
Here’s a sculpture in Broadway (the main street) in Saratoga – I took this with my iPhone to be my screen backdrop in my iPhone – I got bored with gray.
iPhone screen
As I said – this was a long day. Toward the end of the day I spent some time in Saratoga Spa State Park. In the 1930s the space facility was rebuilt on a grand scale (the scale of the complex reminds me of a Mayan temple complex at Monte Alban near Oaxaca). Good Depression era public works, but the scale is far larger than current demand so much of it appears to be in good condition but disused. Maria took a treatment, so I took some pictures with my ever-present Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux lens.
The Baths at Saratoga
Moe of the same:
The Baths at Saratoga
Enough of July 24 2012. On July 24, 2011: Hogmead. No kidding on the name. An inn in Nairobi.
VISCHER FERRY and SARATOGA SPRINGS NEW YORK – We took a hike and picnicked in the Vischer Ferry area – 20 minutes’ drive south of Saratoga – today. There’s a very pleasant trail that follows a towpath of one of the extensions of the Erie Canal. It started to pour just as we got back to the car. By the time that we got back to Saratoga there was one of those post storm moments with amazing light. I captured some images that are the first that I’ve really liked in Saratoga.
Here’s to towpath with my Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux.
SARATOGA NEW YORK – We (the real we, not the editorial we) went to the track this afternoon with Alexander and Laura. Four adults. We bet on five races. A total of 20 bets, each of us taking a different horse for each race. We consulted tout sheets, horoscopes and fortune cookies and plumbed our color preferences. We didn’t have a single winning ticket. Not one.
At least I got some pictures. The track at Saratoga isn’t elegant (for that matter neither is Churchill Downs). The NY Racing Association depends on small bets from thousands of t-shirted bettors – who are here indeed in large numbers. Here are some punters on the rail captured with my Fuji X-Pro1 and 35mm lens.
At the races
One of the large houses on Union Street on the walk back from the track.
Union Street
On this day last year: A bad travel day. Not much of a picture. Really.
SARATOGA SPRINGS NEW YORK – I guess we must be helicopter parents. Our daughter, Francesca, is taking the New York State bar exam in Saratoga next week so we drove up here to keep her company at meal times. Saratoga is warmed over from the gilded age – Diamond Jim Brady and C V Whitney are long gone, replaced by hordes in t-shirts. It’s the end of the ballet season and the start of the racing season. We stayed in a Victorian relic named the Adelphi Hotel. I’m not in love with any of the images that I’ve taken here.
The carousel in the park taken with my Leica M9 and a 24mm Summilux lens:
Carousel
In the Adephi, taken with my Fuji X-Pro 1 and a 35mm Fuji lens:
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Fotocare had a sample Leica Monochrom so I borrowed it for an hour to give it a spin. Very interesting camera. It’s a Leica M9 with a grayscale only sensor. The absence of a Bayer filter in front of the lens roughly doubles resolution. It forces thinking and seeing as if one is shooting black and white film. I’ve ordered one. Here are some results from my walk with it.
RainPizza Man
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A friend who’s the Head of the Browning School took us on a tour of a major construction project that the school has undertaken. This from the boiler room; taken with my Leica M9 and an 18mm lens.
Boiler room
So I was walking down the street and spotted a big shrub that was in bloom and it looked like a lilac. Same shape leaves. Same color leaves. Similar shape bush. Small lilac-colored flowers brow in grape-like clusters, but have a yellow center. No real scent. But it’s late July and lilacs bloom in the late spring, so what is this thing. I shot it with my iPhone. Any ideas?
Lilac look-alike
More film scans from Milan. One thing is clear: as I’ve previously noted this project (a daily photo blog) would be something between very hard and impossible shooting film. Here I am still posting from Milan two weeks after our return. The fact is that my Imacon scanner grinds through one frame at a time so a roll of film is a lot of work. I do love the scans that it produces, though.
