NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I spent the morning in a snow-covered Central Park. A few interesting images. Here’s a view of the El Dorado, one of three large building on Central Park West built by Emory Roth (the others are the Beresford and the San Remo). This is a common angle on the building, across the Central Park Reservoir. Two frames taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60, with a 300 mm lens on a monopod. This is another example of how well this camera’s files convert to black and white.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I spent most of the day in the office. Fortunately in the late afternoon there was a moment when the light was wonderful, so I caught this image looking south from 919 Third Avenue with my Leica M9 and 35mm Summilux II lens. It’s two frames stitched.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I had lunch with a friend, Bill Hoar, at Blue Smoke, Danny Meyer’s BBQ joint. We had very good burgers but the service was poor, uncharacteristic for a Danny Meyer restaurant. After lunch I stepped out onto Lexington Avenue and was amazed: the light was spectacular. Golden, slightly filtered sunlight from the southwest, just illuminating the west side of the avenue, with a very dark sky to the north as a backdrop. The key feature in this urban landscape was the Chrysler Building, a long-time favorite subject of mine. I hadn’t planned on walking, but I ended up walking from 27th Street to Grand Central, dodging traffic and snapping all the way. I’ve been dreading this post for several days now – I can’t possibly edit the images down to one for today without a bit more perspective so I’ve included four images of the Chrysler Building.
No fewer than three passers by commented to me about the light (this is New York – people don’t talk to strangers on the street); one commented that I was lucky to have a camera to be able to shoot this. I’ve thought a lot about this. It wasn’t luck that I had a camera with me – I actually carry a camera everywhere. But I’m lucky to live where I do at this time; I’m lucky to be able to make the time to pursue photography and this daily photo blog; and I’m lucky to be able to shoot with brilliant and exotic equipment.
Anyway, here are the images, all shot with my Leica M9 and a 90mm Elmarit lens.
Chrysler Building IChrysler Building IIChrysler Building IIIChrysler Building IV
On this day last year: Empire State Building. An odd coincidence; stalking the Chrysler Building this year and the Empire State Building on this day last year.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is a slightly melancholy week for me – it’s my first week serving as of counsel in my law firm – I’m officially no longer a partner. I photographed the “work wall” in my office, a design feature common in offices that includes file drawers and bookshelves. A lot of effort went into its design. (Gensler was the architect, the wood is anigre – ours is a light wood office.) Everything about it is obsolete. The file drawers are empty; their contents have been supplanted by on-line resources. There are almost no books on the bookshelves; books have been supplanted by on-line resources. What you see on the bookshelves are mostly “deal toys”, mementos of completed transactions past, but for the present and future a luxury that most clients are not willing to pay for. Pictures of my family at younger ages. Anyway . . . . Here’s the work wall shot with a Leica M9 and 35mm Summilux II lens.
Office at Debevoise & Plimpton
On this day last year: Balloons!! This is really as good as it gets. On reflection one of my favorites from last year. Taken with my Leica M9 and a 35mm Summicron version iv lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I carried my Leica around as I went about Holiday preparations. I stopped at a costume rental place on West 38th Street to pick out costumes for a New Year’s Eve party. Here is a portion of a wall of photographs, sent to the shop by clients, showing their costumes. Of course I had the Walker Evans image Walker Evans Studio in mind.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’ve revised this post (on January 5, 2011). The red lobster images originally posted was actually taken on December 23. I’ve included a copy of it for the record. The real post is from my office with my Leica M9 and a 35mm Summilux II lens: AT&T Building
Herels the original red lobster, which really belongs to December 22.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’ve taken advantage of a Hasseblad offer the upgrade my H3D-39 to the latests H4D-60. That’s a medium format system with 60 megs of resolution. I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with a piece of equipment called HTS 1.5 and the new camera – it adds the ability to tilt and shift lenses (as one can on a view camera). The HTS 1.5 provides 18mm of shift in either direction. So theoretically f you do three images, one centered, one with the lens shifted all the way left and the other shifted all the way right, in portrait orientation, and stitch them, you end up with a frame in landscape orientation with a perfect 2×3 aspect ratio and pixel dimensions of 12,762 x 8,488, for a whopping 108 megs. Nice but does this actually work?
The image below was captured with the Hasselblad 100mm lens and the HTS 1.5 – three images with the HTS 1.5 shifted as above and stitched in Photoshop.
Here’s a 1:1 crop from the left side of the image – the Robert Kennedy Bridge (formerly the Triborough Bridge) at night.
Robert Kennedy Bridge
This is very impressive – I’m going to have some fun with this thing.
