NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I’m exploring other daily photo blogs – I’m working on a page of links and critique that I’ll post here when its finished. There actually aren’t many of them. The one I like best is one polaroid a day over an 18 year period, to the photographer’s death. Someone has lovingly scanned and uploaded the 7,000 odd images, and built a very nice flash gallery. Here’s a link: hughcrawford.com. Anyway, I’ve been doing more in Manhattan in the early evening with my ultra-wide 12mm lens:
November 19, 2010November 20, 2010
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Feel free to go to one of those other daily photo blogs that you follow if you find that my voice is getting a little whiney. Yes, another week of all day meetings, at least through Wednesday, including a trip to Boston. You may ask “Why doesn’t Woody just quit the damn day job?” Actually I like my day job – it’s just that sometimes it gets in the way of photography – why I like it is beyond the scope of a two paragraph discussion. Today I spent some time shooting going to and from my meetings. Sometimes this is not very productive, but today it was, so I’m posting two images. They are both with my Leica and the 12mm Voigtlander lens – I’m getting more interesting results shooting wide right now. Let me know if you think it’s a gimmick.
Anyway here’s a night shot looking straight up at the facade of the New York Central building (now known as the Helmsley Building) at the foot of the North segment of Park Avenue. Wikipedia entry on the Helmsley Building. The Wikipedia entry is oddly ambiguous on who the architects were. It’s actually Warren & Wetmore, who were also responsible for Grand Central Terminal. Here’s a link to the AIA website.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – More Manhattan in the early evening, with shooting tucked in between meetings. I’m shooting with a long lens on my Leica. Night shooting with a long lens is a serious challenge in Manhattan. Decent image quality requires low ISO and f-stops in the f8 – f11 range resulting in long (multi-second) shutter speeds. There are serious issues using a tripod in Manhattan: there are many plazas and parks that are actually private property and where they are banned; the police think that they are illegal, and they are heavy, bulky and in fact do get in the way of pedestrian traffic in the dark.
The solution is to use a bean bag to stabilize the camera against a tree, parking meter or whatever is at hand. The available of something to prop the camera against constrains point of view, which makes the process more interesting. Here’s an image of the Chrysler Building looking south on Lexington Avenue with the moon:
November 11, 2010
Here’s my “tripod”, a red athletic sock filled with lentils:
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – November is a good month for night photography in New York. Post-daylight savings time it’s dark very early so it’s possible to catch buildings with most of their lights on. This is a very busy time in my day job with round-the-clock meetings all week this week and last week. It’s generally not appropriate for me to photograph in work situations because of client confidentiality concerns. Woody’s day job. My best opportunities are while moving around Manhattan on foot going to and from meetings. Today I had a long lens (a 135mm APO-Telyt) on my Leica. This is unusual for me – I’m much more at home shooting wide.
November 9, 2010
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – I’ve been meaning to try a night image of our house in Connecticut for some time. Here’s a try at it under tough conditions – a high wind made working on a tripod challenging. This is stitched from two frames. Leica M9 with a 90mm Elmarit lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A crap day for photography. The weather was an appalling mixture of wind and rain. I carried my Leica around all day, but didn’t get much use out of it: My schedule consisted of lunch at the Harvard Club with an old friend (photography isn’t appropriate here) followed by a trip to B&H with the same friend but I didn’t have the wit to use my Leica there. An evening concert at Carnegie Hall, guest of a professional friend so again photography wasn’t appropriate. I arrived home after the concert empty-handed photo-wise, so I set my Nikon up on a tripod with a long lens and shot the rainy night out my window. Long exposures with long lenses are technically demanding and I was tired, so the results are so-so at best. Here’s the best of a poor lot, shot with a Nikon D700 and a 200mm lens with a 1.7x tele-extender.
Rainy night in Manhattan
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I play poker with a group of old friends on a roughly quarterly basis. This was the night. No pictures of the game – what happens there stays there. But here’s the view from the terrace of our host.
New York Financial District at Night
Leica M9 with a 24mm Summilux lens. Two frames stitched together.
