NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent some time today shooting around the Queensborough Bridge on the Manhattan side. There’s a lot of visual interest going on here – this is a spot where I’ve shot a dozen times. All images were taken with my Leica Monochrom and 50mm Summicron FLE lens. This is the equipment that I shoot best with – I can actually get along with one camera and one lens (despite owning multiple bodies and a lot of lenses).  I shoot with a three stop neutral density filter which lets me shoot this lens wide open in daylight. The chimney image is three frames stitched; the look up image is two frames. The stitching technique lets me use the 50mm as if it were a wide angle zoom.
Day 2,680 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.
ManhattanManhattanManhattan
On this day last year (day 2,314): Reservoir I had been watching for this shot for years.  It’s one of my favorites from last year.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is another very cold day with nice light. I’m posting three images, not because they are all terrific, but because I couldn’t decide. In general I try to explore eight or ten image ideas every day, which results in 30-50 images as I walk around each subject trying on different angles and framings. Editing is a serious chore.
Day 1,957 of one photo every day for the rest of my life.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent some time this afternoon with Lois Connor and Tom Gitterman walking through Lois’s show at the Gitterman Gallery. The gallery is in midtown in the lovely deco Fuller Building, so I spent some time on the sidewalk hunting for today’s image.
Day 1,819 of one picture every day for the rest of my life.
Fuller BuildingDoors
On this day two years ago (day 1,089): Ground fog.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Another day of experimenting with the electronic viewfinder (EVF) on the Leica M. There was a Leica reflex camera in the film era, called the Leica R, that had some remarkable telephoto lenses – the 180mm and 280mm are particularly highly praised. Of course in a post-film world the Leica R and its lenses are of little interest since Leica has not made a digital successor to the R. R lenses are accordingly not in high demand in the used market. Serious Nikon shooters buy them and have them converted to Nikon mount, a process akin to brain surgery and of course they don’t autofocus.
The EVF permits me to use a Leica R 280mm lens on my Leica M (by means of a simple adapter). So I spent a couple of hours shooting out my window. The view through the EVF and the 280 is poor: it’s slithery and jumpy (because of the slow refresh rate of the EVF) and too contrasty to make valid exposure judgments. The focus aid, however, works very well. Based on the viewfinder I thought that I was getting junk, but all of the images ended up being well focused, exposed and composed. The lens is indeed excellent, although the digital camera exposes some red/green chromatic aberration that was probably not evident on film – its easily corrected for in Lightroom. Here are some examples:
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A landscape day. Brilliant early Spring light reinforce’s the city’s three dimensionality. Here’s the back of a newsstand taken with my Leica Monochrom and 21mm Super Elmar M lens. The idea was to express visual clutter but not chaos.
Lottery
On this day last year: High Line. Shot with my Alpna and Phase One 80 meg. back.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – So here I am out on the street (actually a side street in the 80s on the East Side) with my Leica Monochrom trying to take a serious picture. This is with my 18mm Super Elmar lens and a yellow filter which does nice job of darkening the sky. And of course the second image is a shot around the house with my iPhone and the kitCam app, which I actually think is a better picture.
ClutterCandles
