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 . . . .
Street
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.
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:
Central Park
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.
Olive tree 1970
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.
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.
SubwayColumbus Circle
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.
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.
S. Feldman Housewares
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
Good light
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.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I explored downtown with my Leica after some meetings today. Here’s the Old Equitable Building, Thames Street, a block from the Occupy Wall Street protests. Taken with my Leica M9 and 90mm lens. Four frames stitched.
Old Equitable Building, Thames St.
Here’s my self portrait from 7:03 PM on February 13, 1999:
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Another day on the street with my Alpa TC and 35mm Schneider lens. The Bull and Bear on Lexington Avenue in the 50s.
The Bull and Bear
The next in a series of 24 self-portraits taken on February 13, 1999 with an Arca Swiss 8×10 view camera.
