WARREN CONNECTICUT – I’ve made good this one time on my promise to myself to get up to Connecticut on Thursday evening. More experimentation with my 28mm PC lens on my Leica M, this time with some wildflowers.
On this day last year: Scuol Switzerland.
BULLS BRIDGE CONNECTICUT – Here we are on the Appalachian Trail somewhere near Bulls Bridge. I’m continuing my struggle with depicting landscape in the Eastern deciduous forrest. Here’s a color, consciously Cézanne-like, treatment with my Leica M and 28mm PC lens.
On this day one year ago: Flatiron.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – May Day. Not a big deal here in the US. I went on a hike with my friend John Novogrod. I’ve discussed on these pages in the past the difficulty that I have with Eastern landscape. Deciduous forest rather than the desert, cactus and sagebrush that I grew up with. I find it difficult to organize and really see. Here’s a better than average try – three frames stitched.
On this day last year: Egg crate building. Blah. Whatever. Meh. Yes, Woody, you can do better than this.
NEW PRESTON CONNECTICUT – More extreme stuff with the Leica Monochrom. I spent the day shooting at ISO 5000 in daylight. That means stoping the lenses down all of the say and shooting at 1/4000 seconds, Needless to say every thing is sharp, the image is contrasty so there is no need to add contrast in post and there is noise in the shadows. Noise can be reduced by binning – downsampling the image to one quarter of it’s size. This leaves a pixel deficit for large high resolution prints, which can be fixed by stitching multiple images. So here we have three images exposed at ISO 5000 with my Monochrom and an 18mm Leica SEM lens, three frames stitched and downsampled in Photoshop to reduce noise. Note the nice shadow detail and crisp rendering on the spray. This is fun.
On this day last year: Macedonia State Park. Hiking last year in Connecticut, tuning up for our trip to Switzerland. A crumby picture. I really have trouble with these Eastern deciduous forests. Keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting . . . Maybe I’l figure it out some day.
WASHINGTON CONNECTICUT – More infrared so watch out for gimmicks. On the golf course today with my Leica Monochrom, 35mm lens and infrared filter. It was a sunny day so this produced an extreme infrared effect with a black sky and white foliage. As noted yesterday the effect is more subtle in the winter so I usually don’t shoot infrared this time of year – but I’m checking to see how this works with my Monochrom. This requires extremely high ISO – this image was taken at 5000. This results in a good bit of digital grain which can be minimized by processing – particularly by downsizing the image. This is three frames stitched:
Another:
On this day last year: John and Alexander.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – The conversations around here today were about people’s bad drive – the Saw Mill Parkway was closed because of flooding from torrential rains. Build an ark. Today is midway through what turned out to be three days of steady, heavy downpour. Demotivating to a guy who likes blue skies and puffy clouds. I’m going to push a bit on the technical side this weekend, so watch out for gimmicks. Today I tried to cut the gloom by using on-camera flash for landscape with my Leica M and Leica S, shooting for either very wide or very narrow depth of focus. Here are some example:
On this day last year: Why did I take this? Allow me a moment of public self-flagellation. Why on earth did I take this? I guess every year needs a worst picture but this looks like I was out to establish a low point.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – This is not another cheap shot of Basil the Norfolk Terrier. It’s actually a picture of Francesca. She’s the out of focus one in the back with the top of her head cut off.
Taken with my Leica S medium format camera.
On this day one year ago: Scouting.
