NEW YORK NEW YORK – This was a day of eccentric behavior. I shot color. That’s right. Color. You don’t see much of that around here for good reason. I grew up shooting black and white film. Processing it myself. Printing in a darkroom. So I tend to see in Black and White. The camera I currently use most, the Leica Monochrom, only shoots in black and white so it encourages this behavior. But today I took out my Leica M which like almost all digital cameras sees in color so if I want black and white I have to convert the files in Lightroom or Photoshop. But this was a colorful day so I decided to leave the images in color. Here we go, taken with my Leica M and a Leica 24mm Summilux lens. The lens is wearing sunglasses, a .9 neutral density filter. This lets me shoot at f1.4 in daylight leading to very thin depth of field. Wide open this lens has a slightly edgy “bokeh” (the character of the out of focus portions of the image), a common trait of highly corrected modern lenses.
April MadnessWhat on earth . . .Does anyone know what this is?
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This morning I took a break from professional cares and walked to the office through Central Park in curtain filtered sunlight. Sometimes too filtered and flat; at other times lovely. Today I shot with the Leica Monochrome: the fact that it’s limited to black and white protected me from my worst tendencies and instincts in shooting this time of the year. My lens for the day was the ’60s era Leica 35mm Summicron v.IV, aka the “bokeh king”. The first is three frames stitched.
TapestryCentral ParkPortrait
WARREN CONNECTICUT – We’ve had a pattern here in the past few weeks where most days have a high overcast, but at sunrise the sun peeks under it for a few minutes. So here we are in lovely early morning light looking straight up with my Leica M and an 18mm Super Elmar M lens.
Dawn
Two takes on the same subject. Same camera but with my 35mm Leica Summicron v.IV, a lens from the 1970s known as the “bokeh king”.
Gas stationGas station redux
On this day one year ago: Spring in Connecticut. Spring is arriving at least three weeks later this very cold year. But last year at this time . . . this year I’m working with my Monochrom a lot to avoid the Spring colors trap.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – You call this spring?! This is an outrage! I want my money back. The snowdrops (galanthus) have just poked their heads up. Six full weeks later than last year. The forsythia haven’t bloomed! I might as well be in Minnesota.
I shot the snowdrops with my iPhone – that’s how I get close to small things.
WASHINGTON DC – I’m here in DC at some client meetings. They start around 8:00 AM but that let’s me get up and catch the morning magic hour with such monuments and flowering stuff (there’s a lot of it) as are within walking range of our hotel. These are all with my Leica M and an 18mm Super Elmar M lens – my go to wide these days. That’s the same contrail in the first two images.
MonumentTreasuryTulips, almost
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Here we are, on the street in Manhattan in bright early Spring light, with my new Leica M and a 21mm Super Elmar M lens. This is familiar territory working through the plusses and minuses of a new Camera.
57th Street
NEW PRESTON CONNECTICUT – Spring is almost here. Spring runoff swelling the Aspetuck River. Taken with my medium format Leica S camera. Two frames stitched.
Spring runoff
