GOSHEN CONNECTICUT – We visited some friends, Henry and Celia McGee, in Goshen for lunch – Goshen is the site of a country county fair in August – we’ll be back. Taken with my Fuji X Pro-1 and a Fuji 35mm lens.
In this day last year: Moonrise over Manhattan. I probably won’t see this juxtaposition again. Ever.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A truly splendid day for photography. I went out into the world with my Sony Nex-7 and 24mm Summicron. First to my final landscape class at ICP were I had a chance to shoot the class’s work. Then some quality outdoor urban time eating a sandwich in the plaza at 43rd Street and 6th Avenue. Then home to dress for dinner, in this case dress was white tie and tails, with some college classmates. Terrific chance to catch guys wearing penguin suits. Finally walking home at 10:30 I stopped to review the day’s images, and there were’t any. Wow. Colossal stupidity. Brobdingnagian blunder. I left home without a CF card in the camera. I captured nothing. The viewfinder had a warning but I didn’t notice it. This is the second time since I started this project that I’ve done this. Emphasizes the importance of basics. Load film in the camera. I always take an exposure before I leave home to check the camera, but not today.
What to do? Here I am on Madison Avenue at 10:30 with no picture for the day. Wait. My iPhone. It only has 10% charge left but that’s enough. I got one image through the window of EAT. That’s it, my image for the day.
On this day one year ago: Alum.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – A big day on the inner foodie front. I’ve mastered pizza on the Big Green Egg. Thin crust, crisp, scorched on the bottom but not burned. Like Naples. Italy. It’s been a process getting here. We blew out the OEM felt gasket on the Green Egg two weeks ago trying to make Pizza with Patrizia Chen. Last weekend we tried it without a gasket but found that the leakage interfered with maintaining very low temperatures for smoking. So this weekend I installed a serious furnace gasket designed for very high temperature use. I little bit of research online suggested that the pizza stone should be elevated about two inches so I put it on a large flat plan. Here’s the result taken with my Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux lens. With some more practice handling the dough I might even be able to manage a round pizza – this one seems to be shaped like South America.
On this day last year: Bill Jackson.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – A weekend with friends and family. Maria is in Europe but our children and Kimball and Patrizia Chen joined us for the weekend. We just had a Big Green Egg delivered – known as the “Harley of outdoor cooking” so I’m experimenting with ribs, steaks, pork shoulder, pizza, you name it. This is deep water – I’ve got a fair amount of work to do on it.
Here’s John Novogrod listening to Alexander at dinner with us. Taken with my Leica M9 and Noctilux lens.
On this day last year: 22nd Steet.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m going to ramble a bit today. Maria (wife), Francesca (daughter) and my sister in law are all off for the week in Mexico at a spa having quality female bonding time (and celebrating Francesca’s graduation last week). This means that Basil (the Norwich Terrier) and I are home alone. Do we have miserable litle lonely guy meals, gnawing on pizza crusts and drinking a designer beer? Do we impose ourselves on our friends, offering entertaining conversation in exchange for protein and alcohol? Not on your life.
When I’m on my own I cook. It’s a chance to experiment. A chance to order out for a pizza without shame if I cook up a disaster. Since last Friday (when the women in my life left) I’ve done 7 variants on a hamburger, sous viding them to medium rare and finishing at high temperature. Various blends. When to salt. And so on. Today I looked around for ideas and found that I had a copy of the “Blackberry Farm Cookbook”. I’m a lucky guy – we have a lot of friends in publishing who send me cookbooks. When this one arrived I thought “Ugh – not another farm to table picture book.” I had forgotten that Blackberry Farm is currently the premier foodie destination in the country. Anyway I cooked a braised rabbit, and roasted hen of the woods mushrooms and corn pudding. A college classmate, Ted Elliott, has settled north of San Francisco and has made a career at wine – I opened a bottle of his TR Elliott Queste Pinot Noir (2008). The wine was better than the food. The rabbit was delicious but had a slightly dry mouthfeel (isn’t rabbit always like this?). The corn pudding was fabulous but the liquid proportions and cooking time were wrong for my stone ground corn meal – if I hand’t made adjustment it would have been corn chowder. As I said . .
A neighbor in Connecticut gave me a bunch of rhubarb – a golden opportunity to make rhubarb sorbet. Anyway, here’s dinner, taken with my relatively new Puji X-Pro 1 and a 50mm Fuji lens.
And the sorbet:
On this day last year: Green.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I got a new lens today. A Leica Noctilux – affectionately known as a “Nocti”. Further evidence of my infatuation with exotic gear. The Nocti has been backordered for a year or more. At f.95 it’s the fastest still camera lens around. Big and heavy. The point of this lens is to shoot it wide open so I also bought a neutral density filter which permits shooting at f.95 in daylight. I clamped the Nocti onto my Sony Nex-7 and took a walk up Broadway. The focusing with the Nex-7 was a little disappointing. F.95 demands very accurate focus and the Nex didn’t deliver – only about half of the images from the day were technically good. Here is a sampling.
I ended up at the James Beard Foundation Media Awards:
On this day one year ago: Rain.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Lunch at the Shake Shake on East 86th Street. Taken with my Sony Nex-7 and a 24mm Leica Summilux lens.
On this day one year ago: Lounge Terminal 3.
