WARREN CONNECTICUT – Well now . . . comparing this year’s picture with last year’s there seems to be a theme. It’s cold here in Warren. Especially in the winter. There’s ice everywhere. This year I shot it with my Monochrom and 24mm Summilux lens. I decided to include two of them. I have more pictures of ice available if you’re curious about the topic.
IceIce
On this day last year: Winter in Connecticut. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and a 1945 vintage Carl Zeiss Jena f1.5 Sonnar lens.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Boxing Day. A major holiday in England but not here. We’re having a Boxing Day party nonetheless for fifty or so people, so my day is packed with preparations. I don’t usually photograph at parties that we give because it interferes with interacting with guests. I caught this on the road to our house with my Leica Moncochrom and 50mm Noctilux lens.
Trees
On this day last year: Blizzard. Nice images from a year ago taken with my Monochrom and 18mm Leica SEM lens.
WASHINGTON CONNECTICUT – So this was my day to put my 135mm APO-Telit on my Monchrom. I’m not great with long lenses, but the compression of perspective actually creates an attractive effect on a snowy day like today. I’m using it handheld, which means shooting at high ISO to get a short enough shutter speed to deliver the sharpness that this lens is capable of. Because of the flat perspective it is very easy and reliable to stitch frames, so in my hands it becomes effectively a 50 to 135mm zoom.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – This is Pearl Harbor Day. I wasted a few hours refreshing my knowledge of the Pacific war. In Marine officers Basic School in Quantico the Pacific campaign was (and is) taught island by island but my knowledge has gotten rusty so I did a self-guided refresher. Here’s a remarkable YouTube video of the landing on Tarawa, the Marines’ first opposed landing in the Pacific with terrible losses and important lessons learned for the rest of the campaign. Names like Tarawa, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima resonate deeply with me.
Anyway here’s a picture of our house here. Six frames stitched taken with my Leica Monochrom and a 35mm Summicron Asph. lens.
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.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – The calendar says March 24. The weather gods apparently don’t have a calendar. It’s supposed to be Spring, but there’s no sign of it. Connecticut: the new North Dakota. I’m packing my medium format Leica S today, wearing a 120mm lens (a modest telephoto in this format). Here’s an image of ice on our road.
Still icy
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’ve shot the cityscape out of our dining room window thousands of times. Most often as a brick wall torture test of a lens or camera. But sometimes because the light is perfect or interesting or whatever. Today there was a lovely “Time and Again” moment when the snow muffled the sound of the city and buffed the visual edges down, simplifying the scene. This is with my Leica Monochrome and an 18mm Super Elmar M lens. The look that I’m getting with this camera reminds me of medium format film (such as the Rollei 2.8F, one of my favorite cameras ever).
Snowfall
On this day one year ago: foggy day. We seem to get a lot of these here.
