NEW YORK NEW YORK – Around this time last year we had a heavy snow storm. Today we’re having . . . a heavy snow storm. Early March isn’t quite Spring here in the Northeastern US. Four frames stitched taken with my Leica Monochrom and 135mm lens.
On this day last year: Here I am shooting street stuff with my Alpa. Probably not that good of an idea.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A day of lovely light in the city. The light would be to harsh for non-urban landscape, but here the pavement and buildings act as giant reflectors illuminating shadows, making them less dense. I’m continuing my Leica Monochrom marathon, this time with a 28mm Elmarit lens. The word on the street on this lens is that its high level of sharpness and contrast boarder on offensive. It actually mates well with the Monochrom given the generally fiat look the the Monocrhom files have out of the camera. I had trouble choosing afavorite so I’m presenting a mini-gallery today.
On this day last year: Gray day.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A physically miserable day – rain, fog, low flat sky. This is from my office window with the Leica Monochrom.
On this day one year ago: citicorp center.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We went downtown to explore the small retail presence of an online eyeglasses maker. They’re in the Puck building, just south of Houston. It appears that this building is now owned by New York University which is quietly bought up very important real estate in this area. Here’s the view out the 7th floor window. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and a 50mm Dual Range Summicron lens. Six frames stitched. The stitching software has done something odd here – the perspective of the original version of this image was somehow squished on the horizontal axis. I’ve replaced it with a de-squished version.
On this day one year ago: Laura gets made up
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Back in New York, still shooting with my Monchrom and Dual Range Summicron. It’s hard to find tenderloin-style sleeze in Manhattan at this point – porn shops have been zoned and priced out of the real estate market. There is, however, still a pocket of porn shops around the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
On this day last year: Container terminal.
MILAN ITALY – One last day of tourism in Italy. Maria has finished her meetings so she was able to join me visiting Villa Necchi, Pinacoteca di Brera and shopping on Via Spiga and Via Montenapoleone. One this is clear: these Milanese do design and retail like no one else.
So here are my captures for the day, tank with my Leica M9 and 24mm Lummilux lens.
On this day one year ago: a sick day. I’ve cropped this to be one of my favorite headers for this site.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Out on the street at last, but still with a technical camera. Alpa makes a tiny technical camera, the Alpa TC, that lets me use my Hasselblad 60 meg back and 36mm Schneider lens in a compact, hand-holdable package. Mine looks just like the following image downloaded from the Alpa website.
It’s basically the same form factor, functionality and focal length as the legendary Hasselblad Superwide C (one of my all time favorite cameras), but digital. Very cool. How often have I raved about gear on this blog?
I’m posting two images today from the post office building on Lexington Avenue and 54th Street on an afternoon with brilliant early spring light and the attendant reflections. The first is my image of the day. Again we see how well the files from the Hasselblad back convert to black and white.
I’m posting this one just to show what is possible. I shot this pointing way up with the 36mm lens, which resulted in wildly converging vertical lines. I then corrected the perspective in Lightroom. Extreme perspective corrections are often problematic because they “stretch” pixels resulting in poor resolution. But when you start with a file captured at 60 meg resolution this really isn’t a problem, at least not at web resolution.
On this day last year: Citicorp Center
