NEW YORK NEW YORK – Out a window in our offices with my new Leica S and 35mm lens. It produces very deep files that hold up under intense editorial abuse, in this case extensively lightening the foreground and darkening the sky.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m looking for some of those winter days with lovely brilliant light to give my new Leica S medium format camera a chance to shine. No luck. More freezing rain and fog. So I put it on a tripod and shot out our window, here with a 120mm macro lens.
On this day last year: Staples. January 11 is clearly another undistinguished date on my calendar.
BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS – My monthly trip to Boston is jam-packed this month. Ugly weather. I decided not to go out to shoot, so I shot a four frame stitch out my hotel window using my laptop case to try to suppress reflections in the glass of the window, which doesn’t open. Nice looking construction site. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and 50mm dual range summicron lens.
On this day one year ago: Morso
NEW YORK NEW YORK – You read a lot about the weather on this blog. Woody’s weather channel. what a bore. But the weather really affects me. At the core I’m an landscape photographer; in New York we happen to have an urban landscape; the weather dramatically affects how it looks. Today we had a serious snow storm. The snow turned to slush by the time it reached the ground and photographed as a medium gray sludge. Not to my liking so I pointed my camera out the windows of our apartment to give you a gallery of water tanks, obscured by the snow, on surrounding buildings. All taken with my Leica Monochrom and a135mm APO-Telyt lens.
On this dat=y one year ago: Dandy. Taken with my long-g0ne Ricoh GRD.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This afternoon I had a meeting at the ICP where I found the pay phones hidden – perhaps out of embarrassment for this ancient technology. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and 35mm Summilux FLE lens. A bit earlier I caught a window washer out of my office window.
On this day last year: New Preston Kitchen Goods.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A bit of repair and maintenance today. The rangefinder on my M9 has been slightly out of alignment for a while which has made it hard to focus in demanding situations. Horizontal alignment is easy, but vertical alignment requires peeling the Leica red dot off and using a special tool through a keyhole that the red dot hides. The special tool arrived from China today, so I peeled the red dot off (making a mess in the process) and fiddled with the tool for 10 minutes or so. Weirdly, unexpectedly, after ome trial and error I got it just right. I ordered a replacement red dot online and covered the hole with a little patch of duct tape as a temporary measure so I’m ready to roll. Most people would have sent their camera to Leica for calibration but I use mine every day and can’t really be without it for the three week round trip to Solms.
The focus issue had prevented me from using my Noctilux .95 but since I’ve fixed it I’ll be shooting a lot with the Nocti. It’s a magical lens, imparting a poetic quality to the most mundane objects. Here’s an example:
This morning I had a chance to get more use out of the Perer 35mm lens. Here’s a picture of it, mounted on my Leica M9, taken with my iPhone.
Lovely sunrise light this morning taken out my window with the Perer 35 and my M9:
On this day one year ago: Gil.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Still suffering from a bit of jet lag. Maria and I both woke up very early – in plenty of time to to watch the sunrise illuminate our living room. Maria picking up after an early morning of catching up on magazines and newspapers. Taken with my Fuji XPro 1.
As I write this my Milan film came back from being developed, and I’ve started to scan it. Here are some samples taken with my Leica M3 and Ilford XP5 film. What I notice most? The grain. I’ll be leaking these out into my daily posts as I scan them.
Duomo taken with 50mm Summilux, two frames stitched (yes, once you’ve scanned film you can stitch it!)
On this day last year: Home in Warren.
