NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I had lunch with a friend, Bill Hoar, at Blue Smoke, Danny Meyer’s BBQ joint. We had very good burgers but the service was poor, uncharacteristic for a Danny Meyer restaurant. After lunch I stepped out onto Lexington Avenue and was amazed: the light was spectacular. Golden, slightly filtered sunlight from the southwest, just illuminating the west side of the avenue, with a very dark sky to the north as a backdrop. The key feature in this urban landscape was the Chrysler Building, a long-time favorite subject of mine. I hadn’t planned on walking, but I ended up walking from 27th Street to Grand Central, dodging traffic and snapping all the way. I’ve been dreading this post for several days now – I can’t possibly edit the images down to one for today without a bit more perspective so I’ve included four images of the Chrysler Building.
No fewer than three passers by commented to me about the light (this is New York – people don’t talk to strangers on the street); one commented that I was lucky to have a camera to be able to shoot this. I’ve thought a lot about this. It wasn’t luck that I had a camera with me – I actually carry a camera everywhere. But I’m lucky to live where I do at this time; I’m lucky to be able to make the time to pursue photography and this daily photo blog; and I’m lucky to be able to shoot with brilliant and exotic equipment.
Anyway, here are the images, all shot with my Leica M9 and a 90mm Elmarit lens.
Chrysler Building IChrysler Building IIChrysler Building IIIChrysler Building IV
On this day last year: Empire State Building. An odd coincidence; stalking the Chrysler Building this year and the Empire State Building on this day last year.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I took a walk today on the Lower East Side, ending up at Frankies on Clinton Street for an excellent lunch. Frankies Spuntino. The Lower East Side maintains its sruffy vibe well into the 21st Century, although some streets like Clinton Street are edging cautiously toward gentrification. This is a storefront on Delancey Street taken with my Leica M9 and my ever-present Voigtlander 12mm lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – So today’s post is a tale of a lens. I’m a gear head, perhaps even a gear whore, but I don’t often talk about cameras and lenses here because it’s politically correct to downplay the gear one uses – after all a great photographer can take great pictures with anything. The later statement isn’t actually true – many luminaries in the photo world have selected their gear with great care – often finding the best technical solution for the types of images they take: Ansel Adams and his 8×10 Deardorff, Cartier-Bresson and his Leica and Lee Friedlander (in his later years) and the Hasselblad Superwide. I’ve proven on these pages that I can’t take a decent picture with an iPhone.
Leica has issued a new version of it’s 35mm f1.4 Summilux. It replaces a lens that I owned but sold when the rumor of a replacement circulated – essentially to raise cash to pay for the new lens, which is bizarrely expensive. The lens it replaces is famous for being bitingly sharp and having remarkable contrast corner to corner at all apertures. The former Summicron had “bokeh”, the character of it’s out of focus image, that made it unique. Unfortunately it also had a tendency for the focus point to shift as it was stopped down, resulting in very slightly out of focus images in the range f4.0 to f5.6 or so. This trait, which was not visible with film but is visible in the more demanding digital realm, drove me nuts. The new lens retains the character of the original but has solved to focus shift issue. Here are some links to reviews: Irwin Puts reviews the 35mm Summicron.Steve Huff on focus shift. The new 35mm Summilux has been back ordered for about a year. My copy finally arrived today.
Today I’m posting a picture of a pair of Venini vases (I collect Venini) drying in our kitchen, together with a close up crop to illustrate the character of the out of focus image. This was shot at f1.4. I’m also including a picture of the building that houses the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and a crop, to demonstrate the biting sharpness and contrast. This building was originally built as a residence for George F. Baker Jr. by Delano & Aldrich, the firm that became the ‘society architects” in New York after Stanford White’s murder in 1906. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia is a splinter of the Russian Orthodox Church formed after the Bolshevik Revolution – it is now reconciled with the main body of the Russian Church.
The vases:
A crop from the vases illustrating the characteristic “bokeh” of this lens (note the circular highlights):
Here’s the Synod:
A crop of the Synod – again illustrating this lens’s special character, but also the Leica’s tendency to blow saturated yellow highlights:
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I promise that I’m going to quit this. I mean the wide angle thing. Quit it real soon now. Maybe it’s becoming a crutch. Or worse. My name’s Woody and I’m a wide angle junkie. But later. Maybe. For now I had my Leica and my super wide lens in hand as I walked by the Guggenheim earlier today. If you’ve been following these pages closely you’ll know that the Guggenheim is the one icon that I’ve been struggling with. Well today with Mr. wide I caught it – the first image of the museum that I’m really happy with. Here it is (this is another one of those shot straight up images that could be oriented any of four ways, but I prefer this orientation):
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 – Another full day of meetings. The light first thing in the morning was sensational. For this image I had a 16mm Voigtlander lens on my Leica. Shooting very wide presents a lot of challenges – the wide frame assures that there are extremes in terms of dynamic range, and that either the sun or the photographer’s shadow in the frame.
