NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spend a fair amount of time lurking around Citicorp Center and the Lipstick Building looking up because this part of Manhattan is visually rich. You get a lot of “look ups” from me from around here. Here’s another. Eight frames stitched taken with my Leica Monochrom and 75mm Summicron lens.
Day 1,546 of one photograph a day for the rest of my life.
On this day last year: Sunnylands. The Annenberg estate, Sunnylands, in Palm Desert.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Sometimes shooting through the window of a glass curtain wall building works. It takes a little bit of technique to avoid reflections and dirty spots on the glass but sometimes it can be done. Here’s a twofer: the Lipstick Building and the Chrysler Building. This is out the window of my office. Three frames stitched with my Leica Monchrom and 75mm Summicron lens. It’s an accident that I’ve posted two tall skinny pictures within a week of each other.
Day 1,545 of one photograph a day for the rest of my life.
On this day last year: Sunset in Santa Monica.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A busy day with my cameras. We drove back to New York (from Warren) to get Maria to a doctor – she’s had a hacking cough for two weeks now. When I arrived I found that FedEx had delivered two packages, one with my 2x tele-extender for my Leica R 280mm lens (which I can use on my Leica M camera), one of the great long lenses of all time. I also received a 75mm Leica Summicron Asph., which it turns out is a marvelous lens. The first two frames below are Baby V (our granddaughter) taken with my Monochrom and the new 75mm. In the next image I’m experimenting with the quality of the out-of-focus portions of the image (so-called “bokeh”), which is creamy and lovely, a real accomplishment for such a highly corrected lens. Finally a couple of out my windows with the 280mm and 2x tele-extender set up on a tripod. Looks fine but this combination is really fussy in use.
Apologies for the gear talk. What’s more important here is that Baby is making the transition, at just short of two months old, to having a personality. You begin to get a bit of that in the series of pictures below, taken over about a five minutes period.
On this day last year: Lipstick building. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and 5cm. Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar from 1945 – this lens rocks.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is a day of pre-holiday running around, so my head is not into the visual. My eyes are unengaged. Shopping lists abound. This was a day for my Leica Monochrom and 1959 Dual Range Summicron lens. I shot only at f2.0 today where this lens has a somewhat lower contrast signature. Here are a couple of “look ups”.
On this day last year: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m keeping up the thread on old lenses. I went out today with my 1959 Leica Dual-Range Summicron. I’ve shot this lens extensively in the past two years, but almost always at f5.6 and higher, a range where this lens behaves like a modern Leica lens (its character is very similar to the current 35mm Summicron). Today I resolved to shoot it at f2.0, where it has a lower contrast, more dreamy quality. Here is one from the street:
I also resolved to try the 1937 Carl Zeiss Sonnar on my Monochrom relying on close focus and guessing at longer focus distances. Here you go.
Here’s another with four frames stitched:
On this day one year ago: 86th Street.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – On the street with my Monochrom and 5cm Nikkor from the mid-1950s. Later at a dinner at the Union League Club for Robin Dresser who received the Maxwell Perkins Award with my Leica Monochrom and 35mm Summicron lens.
On this day last year: Subway steps.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I went out today in midtown with my Leica M (which unlike my Monochrom actually takes color pictures) and the 1937 vintage 8.5cm Carl Zeiss Jena lens that I wrote about yesterday. It produces muscular results. Very nice. Here is a typical (for me) shot around Citicorp Center and a wreath that Maria is using as her office Christmas card image this year.
Then for the evening I moved back to my Monochrom and Luxochron lens for a visit to my friend Bill Beekman’s place for a tour of his Virginia Woolf first editions, letters and so on.
On this day one year ago: Lipstick.
