Tag: Manhattan

Wednesday November 9, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Tuesday November 15, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A pair of Bryan Hunt sculptures, Flume I and Flume II, have been installed on the island on Park Avenue between the Seagrams Building and the Racquet and Tennis Club. The look like gigantic gnarly metal cobras. Here’s one of them, captured with my ever-resent Ricoh GRD !V.

Continuing on the theme of variations on the 24 hour self portrait series here’s one where I sliced the images into 24 slivers, and built a composite with a sliver from the earliest time starting on the left and reading hour by hour as you move to the right.

Tags Manhattan, New York, Park Avenue, Sculpture

Landscape Urban

Saturday November 5, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Saturday November 12, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m taking a break from my new Rikoh GRD IV – in good light I find the Alpa, 35mm Schneider and Phase One IQ 180 back irresistible.

This from East 72nd Street. It’s a bit surprising that this building’s coop board permitted air conditioning vents to be cut through the decorative limestone facade.

Here’s number 23. This is the penultimate image from my series of 24 hourly photos of myself taken on February 13 and 14, 1994. This one is from m12:00 noon on February 14. Once I’ve presented all 24 of these, over the next week or so I’ll show you some composites and collages assembled from them, starting Monday.

Tags Manhattan

Landscape Urban

Wednesday November 2, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday November 9, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – More blahs. Today I had lunch at Harry Cipriani with Michele Parmigiani, a remarkable watchmaker who has a show of mechanical wonders that he has restored for the Sandoz foundation at A La Vieille Russie. Lunch was excellent and we were surrounded by fashionable Italians. Somehow out of all of this I couldn’t make a plausible photograph. Tonight was our James Beard Foundation annual Gala at Gustavino, a genuinely interesting space built into one of the approach ramps to the 59th Street Bridge. No photos worth taking up hard drive space. The best I could do for today is this safe view of a Manhattan facade. One of my objectives in my photo a day work is to capture the visual part of life from a privileged (in an artistic rather than economic sense) point of view. It may be that I’m just too wound up in practicing law and the Gala to relax and see the world around me. Still, one photo every day . . . .

Let’s see here, it’s Mr. Curley Hair again. Looking a little fresher at 9:00 after a night of fitful sleep interrupted by my hourly photo regime.

Tags Manhattan, New York

Landscape

Monday October 31, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Sunday November 6, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – I took a walk today in Central Park looking for storm damage with my Alpa TC and 35mm Schneider lens. The camera provoked a number of conversations. There were a lot of tree limbs down, but nothing very dramatic. I needed up shooting a pretty conventional rocks and trees image but the high resolution medium format files make it seem important:

I’ve taken this picture before, actually quite a few times. Here for example is an olive tree from the Pelopnnesian Peninsula taken in 1970 with my twin lens Rollei 2.8F. The tree was probably a couple of thousand years old when I shot it. I hope the intervening 40 years have been kinder to it than they have been to Greece in general.

Here we go with the “Its all about me” part of this post. I’m now actually embarrassed that I started out posting these things, but having started I need to finish. Here’s 7:01 AM on February 14, 1999.

Tags Central Park, Manhattan, New York, Trees

Landscape Monuments Street Urban

Friday October 28, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Friday November 4, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A great day for late fall light. I found myself at Columbus Circle with my Alpa. This was an easy day for me, photographically. The subway image prints at 24×36 nicely and has a vigor that I’m trying to achieve in every image, but actually don’t often realize.

So dear reader, here is my self-portrait from 3:58 AM on February 14, 1999. We’ll come to the end of these soon enough. I generally disapprove of blogs that feature pictures of their creators, but since we got off on the subject of appropriation in art in an earlier post I just thought it would be interesting to post my own examples.

Tags Columbus Circle, Manhattan, New York, Subway

Street

Thursday October 27, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Friday November 4, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A very wet day. I went out in the rain with my Leica and a 35mm pre-ASPH version IV Summicron lens, known as the bokeh king. (Here is Ashwin Rao’s terrific article on bokeh). “Bokeh” for you non lens nuts is the causality of the out of focus image; good bokeh is creamy with smooth transitions between in-focus and out of focus areas; bad bokeh is crunchy with abrupt transitions between in-focus and out of focus. Modern highly corrected designs tend to have poor bokeh; older designs tend to have good bokeh.

From 3:03 AM on February 14, 1999.

Tags Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York, Rain

Landscape Street Urban

Tuesday October 25, 2011

Post author By Woody
Post date Wednesday November 2, 2011

NNEW YORK NEW YORK – So I’m using my Alpa and a 35mm Schneider as my walk-around camera. This only works on sunny days – I’m a sunny day kind of guy so I prefer these anyway. Here’s in image from Madison Avenue and 55th Street

Here’s the next in my series of 24 self portraits taken in 1999. This is from 12:58 AM on February 14, 1999. I slept on a cot in my studio, setting an alarm to wake my hourly for a picture. I clearly haven’t been to sleep on yet because I still look fairly well put together.

Tags Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York