WARREN CONNECTICUT – More familiar ground with my new Leica Monochrom 246. Today I shot some very old lenses that don’t couple properly with the rangefinder but which can be focussed using the camera’s live view feature. The first image is a with a 1936 Karl Zeiss 50mm Sonar f2.0 mounted on the camera with an exotic Contax to Leica adapter from the 1950s. Next is Basil wearing a t-shrt to cover up his stitches so he can’t scratch them.
Day 2039 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Shooting around the house with my Leica S. I’ve sworn never to post a cute pet. But here’s Basil the Norwich Terrier with my Leica S medium format camera. Sorry. Really. But things are tough out here in photo-a-day space and sometimes you have to take what you can get.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I enforce a “no pets or cute kids” rule. Really. Well I’m making a sort of exception today for an image that started out as a picture of a standing vase from Spin in Shanghai in interesting light but ended up as a picture of Basil the Norwich Terrier. He’s a pet for sure so the picture breaks the rule. I’ve added a two frame stitch from the scuzzy stretch of Broadway in the 20s in case you’re a stickler and don’t want to look at a transgressive dog image. Your choice. Both taken with my Leica Monochrom; Basil with a 35mm Summilux FLE lens and the building with a 50mm Summilux, which is just back from a cleaning and adjustment from Nippon Photo Clinic.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – On the street with my Leica Monochrom. I’ve never been good at street photography – it’s probably too late for me to change. My street photography is about at the level of my golf game – bogey in my dreams, much worse in actual fact.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent most of today at Harvard Business School, where the turn-around of the James Beard Foundation was discussed by a class as a case. Very, very bright kids, who over an hour and a half identified most of the issues that we actually dealt with and thoroughly debated all sides. Very interesting – these students are well-qualified to take on the world and all of its problems. We were rushed the whole day with not many opportunities for photography. I captured this at home after I got back from Boston, as I was leaving for dinner. Basil looking irritated. Taken with my Sony Nex-7 and 24mm Leica Summilux lens. The photograph on the wall is by Lalla Essaydi.
WESTHAMPTON, NEW YORK – More with the Leica and the 50mm Summilux. I’ve been shooting a lot in the past month with Alpa and a 35mm Schneider which for a number of reasons facilitates images with a lot of depth of field and corner to corner sharpness. The Leica lets me rebel from that a bit. today (and yesterday) I generally shot with this lens wide open at f 1.4, producing large far out of focus regions. Steve’s house seemed to call out for this treatment.
Like most modern Leica lenses the 50 mm Summilux has optimum sharpness at its widest aperture, f 1.4 (lenses from other manufactures often need to be stopped down two stops for maximum clarity), this is one of the reasons why these lenses are so expensive. The out of focus portions of the of 50mm Summilux images have a lovely, creamy character, a quality that is referred to as “good bokeh”. I also like the way it renders colors. I don’t often write effusive praise for lenses. I guess I just got carried away by this one.
By the way, sorry about the dog. You know how I feel about pictures of dogs and cute kids.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – After three inches of new snow overnight we had a bracingly cold and clear day in Connecticut. Have I mentioned that this has been the coldest, most snow-covered winter ever? But at least I feel that I’m back on my daily photo game again after a rough day yesterday. Taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60 and a 35-90 zoom lens. I’m using the Hasselblad rather than the Alpa because the external battery that I bought to power the digital back on the Alpa doesn’t seem to have enough capacity in this very cold weather. A common issue with batteries, but disappointing nonetheless. Basil the Norwich terrier snuck into this one, creating another exception to my “no pets” rule on this blog.
If you compare this images with yesterday’s, you’ll see that we have a lot more snow in Warren than in New Milford, which is less than 20 miles south. This is typical. Warren, and even our hillside in Warren, is at least one USDA zone colder than the surrounding towns.
