NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I had lunch at Colicchio and Sons, followed by a trip across 10th Avenue to the Chelsea Market, an outstanding food destination. The James Beard Foundation (of which I’m the Chairman) is opening a popup restaurant at Chelsea Market named JBFLtd. I dropped by the restaurant in its final stages of preparation.
JBF Ltd. - James Beard Foundation restaurant pop-up
On this day one year ago: Image of Spring with truly ugly bokeh.
Spring
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is the heaviest time of the year in my day job. As you have learned if you’ve read my biography I’m a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton. We’re supposed to treat clients and each other professionally so its bad form burst in on people popping a flash in their faces. So on days when I find myself in the office for long hours I tend to take breaks wandering the halls looking for whatever. Here’s an image taken in a conference room. And of course here we are stalking the Chrysler Building (one of my favorite subjects) and a modern riff on the 1929 Marcel Breuer armchair, a rough contemporary of the Chrysler Building and itself a design icon.
Debevoise conference room
On this day one year ago: Christ Episcopal Church, Sharron CT
Christ Episcopal Church Sharon CT
NEW YORK NEW YORK – St. Patricks Day. Why am I not out photographing the parade? After all that’s what I did on St. Patricks Day last year. Well there are couple of reasons. For me a parade is interesting if you have a privileged point of view. For example as a participant or from a high vantage point. I haven’t arranged for either this year. Absent that sometimes the most compelling images can be found by looking in the opposite direction from the parade and focus on the spectators – ground that I covered last year. But the truth is I was too busy to get out.
I did find an hour to experiment further with exploring the limitations of my Hasselblad 60 meg back on an Alpa 12 Max technical camera. Today’s assignment was to see how this combination works with focus stacking – a technique of combining images taken at various focus distances into one image, all parts of which are in focus. There is a software tool, called Helicon Focus, that makes this possible. The following image, taken in our living room, was made by combining six images with focus points from the close edge of the table to the burned out area in the room on the upper right. I used a laser distometer to measure the distances. Technical cameras like the Alpa 12 Max don’t come with focusing aids or light meters. The detail, depth and pliability of the images from this combination are remarkable. I’ll be doing more of these.
At home
On this day one year ago: Guess what? St. Patricks Day Parade.
St. Patrick's Day Parade
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had dinner tonight with our friends Phyllis and Victor Grann. Taken with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens.
Dinner with Phyllis Grann
On this day one year ago: Venini glass in our window.
Venini on my window sill
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I had a long day in the office so I caught up with my photo-a-day obligations at home. Why not a project of photographing personal objects? Here’s a photograph of a photograph of Charis Wilson on the dunes at Oceano in 1936. As photographed by Edward Weston. I’m knocking off Louise Lawler’s ideas. We were about the same age that Charis was in this picture when we bought it. We had no idea how young she and we were.
Edward Weston
On this day one year ago: Fogged in in Palm Springs.
Palm Springs airport
NEW YORK NEW YORK – As noted yesterday we stayed in New York this weekend to attend an engagement party at the River Club. Shot with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens..
Engagement party at the River Club
On this day one year ago: Joshua Tree National Park.
Joshua Tree National Park
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I went to the Knickerbocker Club for a terrific performance of Gilbert & Sullivan by the Blue Hill Troupe. This image is from the dinner afterwards, taken with my small Panasonic.
Dinner at the Knick
On this day last year: Another meal – dinner at Corton.
Dinner at Corton
WASHINGTON CONNECTICUT – Today we went to a service at the Washington Congregational Church – our daughter and her fiance were with us. They are planning on getting married here next year. After the service I photographed the interior. I’ve done many exterior images of this building on these pages: Under the portico. Washington Congregational Church exterior. Washington Congregational Church detail. Taken with my Alpha Max and a 36mm Schneider lens. Two frames stitched.
Washington Congregational Church
On this day last year: Another pinhole image – this one in Milford PA.
Milford Pennsylvania
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent most of the day in the office, so I spent a bit of time lurking around the halls with my Leica M8.2 and an IR filter, looking for things to photograph. I caught this in the elevator lobby on my floor. Shot with a 35mm pre-aspheric Summicron v. 4, known as the “Bokeh king” for creamy quality of the out of focus portions of the images it creates. If you think I’m kidding on the Bokeh king thing try Googling it and see what you get. This lens is also an outstanding lens for infrared. Here’s the image:
pLIMPton
On this day one year ago: Too cold to go outside
Warren
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I picked my car up from being serviced to day and killed some time in the showroom with my Leica and a very wide lens, the 16mm Voigtlander. Here’s an image. One interesting aspect of the showroom is that the lighting is designed to be symmetrical from this car’s position, and the cove lighting in the ceiling emphasizes the car’s lines. These people are smarter than you would expect.
Lexus of Manhattan
On this day last year: Sixth Avenue in not very interesting light.
Sixth Avenue
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – More mementos – these from our living room in New York. I really am in a sentimental place. There is a digital technique called focus bracketing that lets you extend depth of field. It turns out that this is actually easier that messing with tilts (the classical view camera technique for achieving a similar result) as long as nothing moves between exposures. This was taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60 and a 150 mm lens. It’s 7 exposures focusing from near (the front of the tea chest) to far (the speaker grill in the lower left). The frames were stacked in Helicon Focus, specialized software that combines focus bracketed images to produce one in focus composite. The moire on the lampshade is actually not an digital artifact – it results from the interaction of screens in front of the window that illuminates the scene.
Momentos
On this day last year: Dangerous tree.
Park Avenue
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is a slightly melancholy week for me – it’s my first week serving as of counsel in my law firm – I’m officially no longer a partner. I photographed the “work wall” in my office, a design feature common in offices that includes file drawers and bookshelves. A lot of effort went into its design. (Gensler was the architect, the wood is anigre – ours is a light wood office.) Everything about it is obsolete. The file drawers are empty; their contents have been supplanted by on-line resources. There are almost no books on the bookshelves; books have been supplanted by on-line resources. What you see on the bookshelves are mostly “deal toys”, mementos of completed transactions past, but for the present and future a luxury that most clients are not willing to pay for. Pictures of my family at younger ages. Anyway . . . . Here’s the work wall shot with a Leica M9 and 35mm Summilux II lens.
Office at Debevoise & Plimpton
On this day last year: Balloons!! This is really as good as it gets. On reflection one of my favorites from last year. Taken with my Leica M9 and a 35mm Summicron version iv lens.
919 Third Avenue
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I carried my Leica around as I went about Holiday preparations. I stopped at a costume rental place on West 38th Street to pick out costumes for a New Year’s Eve party. Here is a portion of a wall of photographs, sent to the shop by clients, showing their costumes. Of course I had the Walker Evans image Walker Evans Studio in mind.
Costumes
On this day one year ago: Dolores Hildago, Mexico.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The New York chapter of the Commanderie de Bordeaux had its Holiday dinner (featuring an ’82 Palmer) at the Union Club. Here are some musicians at the event. My Panasonic GF1 is getting a workout this week – it’s discrete and pocketable, and has ok low-light performance (as you may have noticed I work only in available light). The Union Club is the grandest of Delano & Aldrich’s New York structures; in situations like this I like to shoot wide to take advantage of the context. Shot with a 14mm pancake lens on the GF1.
On this day one year ago: infrared image of Citicorp Center.
Citicorp Center
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Christmas party at the Knickerbocker Club shot with my Panasonic GF1 and a 14mm pancake lens.
Christmas at the Knickerbocker Club
On this day one year ago: Dinner at Quatorze Bis
Quartoze Bis
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Every couple of months I have a poker game with a group of old friends. Shot with my Panasonic.
On this date last year: The Metropolitan Opera
Lincoln Center Fountain and the Metropolitan Opera House
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Today I had breakfast with a friend near Columbia so I used the opportunity to continue my explorations of the Episcopal Cathedral St. John the Devine – the massive unfinished structure at Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street. For more information on this massive undertaking see St. John the Divine. Shot with my Leica M9 and a 12mm Voigtlander lens. The frontal composition obviously has a lot in common with my December 7, 2010 entry.
On this day one year ago: Party for some colleagues.
Party at home
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I spent the morning visiting galleries in Chelsea. There was a terrific Hiroshi Sugimoto installation at the Pace. Pictures of “lighting” manufactured by a telsa coil and a few of his much earlier “beyond infinity” seascapes, shown below. My largest regret in life is that I didn’t buy one of these images years ago when they were first offered at $3,500 each (well it seemed like a lot of money at the time). Here’s a link to Sugimoto’s seascapes.
I also spent some time with Elizabeth Kabler, a friend of my daughter’s and now a friend of mine, at her gallery Skylight Projects.
From this day one year ago: Approach to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Brooklyn Bridge
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – You’ve probably noticed that I’m a gear nut. Apart from the camera problem that’s pretty well documented on these pages, I have an issue with telescopes. I actually own telescopes with apertures (a measure of light gathering capacity) from 3.5 to 18 inches. I sorted out telescope gear in Connecticut last weekend – basically getting organized to use a smaller, quick-to-set-up, scope in the cold winter darkness here. I have two choices, a 4 inch Astrophysics Traveler and a 3.5 inch Questar Duplex.
The Questar is a charismatic object – it offers perfect optical performance in a design that is thoroughly rooted in the 1950s. Here’s a modern review of a Questar. In digging through my gear I found a Questar to 2″ adapter (the Questar stuff is sui generis), a 2″ to Nikon F adapter, and a Nikon to micro four-thirds adapter. By golly maybe I could put all of these together and mount my Panasonic GF1 on the Questar. Based on sad past experience any Nikon F mount body is way to heavy to balance properly on the Questar, but the GF1 is compact and light and has good image quality. I brought the Questar and all of the small bits an pieces to New York to see if I could take a picture through it.
The Questar is a 1300mm f14.6 optic. With the Panasonic camera that’s the equivalent of 2600 mm in 35mm terms! I fit the various small parts together and it seemed to work as planned. Shooting citiscapes out our dining room window was impossible – the air was too unsteady for photography through a telescope. I finally set up in one corner of our kitchen and shot a fitting on a water sprayer in the far diagonal of the kitchen. Here’s the result – the Panasonic GF1 through the Questar, six focus-bracketed images stacked with Helicon Focus software, and minor clean up of focus stacking artifacts in Photoshop.
Here’s a picture of the kitchen sink (taken Tuesday) – I’ve circled the fitting that’s the subject of the previous photo:
And finally, the real reason for this post, a still life of the Questar with the Panasonic GF1 mounted on it, shot Tuesday with my Leica M9 and a 50mm Dual Range Summicron (a design contemporary of the Questar):
This has been a very active day, photographically, so this will be a long post. This evening we went to a benefit for the Center for Fiction at the Racquet and Tennis Club. The event honored Binky Urban. For more pictures from this event follow this link to my flickr page.
Anyway, I captured some available light images with my pocket Panasonic. Here’s a picture of Karl Marlantes and me. Karl is the Author of Matterhorn – the best Vietnam book ever and his first novel. He was awarded the Center for Fiction’s prize for best first novel. I preceded him in Vietnam by about a year – we were both Marines. Since I’m in the picture it obviously wasn’t taken by me. Rachel Cobb is our guest photographer for the day.
Since Rachel took this where’s my picture for the day? Here’s a portrait of Rachel – in satisfaction of the one picture a day requirement:
One more from this event – Karl with Susan Lyne:
On this date one year ago: Sunrise in Connecticut after a storm. This was one of my most highly-praised images of 2009.
Sunrise Litchfield County
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a dinner party for Michael and Penny Hayward, visiting Australian friends. This image was caught with my Nikon D700 and an 85mm f1.4D lens. For more pictures from this dinner see my flickr account: Dinner party for the Haywards.
On this day one year ago: Seagrams Building from the balcony of the Racquet and Tennis Club. This is one of my favorite images of the past year.
Seagrams Building
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a reception for James Beard Foundation members this afternoon at Má Pêche, David Chang’s midtown outpost. Here’s a link: Má Pêche, and a link for the James Beard Foundation. I caught this in the mens’ room with my small Panasonic GF1. The lighting in the main room was interesting but poor for photograph. You can see that I was getting desperate.
One year ago on this date: traffic at Columbus Circle. One of my favorite images of the past year.
Traffic - Columbus Circle
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Warren’s “downtown” consists of the Rooster Tail Inn and four shops. One of the shops, Privet House, belongs to Richard Lambertson who has assembled a sensational collection of eclectic stuff. Travel and Leisure piece on downtown Warren. Anyway this is from Privet House’s substantial collection of things for dogs, Shot with my Leica M9 and my new 35mm Summicorn V. II.
On this date a year ago: Do follow this link for more information on this sad memorial.
J. Pol Memorial New Milford, Connecticut
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Breakfast with my son, Alexander Campbell, at the Brasserie, the other restaurant in the Seagrams Building (besides the iconic Four Seasons). Back with my ultra wide 12mm Voigtlander lens.
On this date a year ago: Jonathan Galassi’s birthday party
Jonathan's Birthday
WASHINGTON D.C. – The James Beard Foundation sponsored a food policy conference, focusing on issues surrounding sustainability, at the Pew Charitable Trust’s offices in Washington. After the conference, taken with my Leica M9 and a 28mm Summicron lens.
Pew Charitable Trust
On this date one year ago: October 21, 2009
Bandon Beach at sunset
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A dreary morning for weather. I decided to use the opportunity to reorganize our kitchen, which is where I spend most of my time when I’m not at the office or looking for interesting light.
Leica M9 and Wide Angle Tri Elmar.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I went to Morningside Heights today to meet my daughter for lunch (she’s a student at Columbia Law School). It was pouring rain. I arrived a bit early and ducked into the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A really interesting subject – I’ll be back in better light. Here’s a link to St. John the Divine; here’s a Wikipedia link St. John the Unfinished. Construction continues on this vast structure, which was started in 1892.
St. John the divine
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I met a friend at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central for lunch – he’s a restaurant reviewer and his mission was to determine whether the Oyster Bar still has its mojo. Well, the Oyster Bar is about the oysters. There were 28 varieties on the menu so we ordered two of each variety: 28 oysters for each guy. Fair warning to our wives. A fabulous lunch. I was too preoccupied with slurping to photograph so I caught this image in Grand Central after lunch.
Grand Central Terminal -ramp from the lower level
Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux lens. Stitched from three frames.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I dropped the car off at our garage after driving back from Connecticut. That’s me, and our Norwich Terrier Basil, in the mirror. I’ve vowed never to post a picture of Basil on my blog (remember all of those pitiful posts on online photo forums to the effect: “Here is my cat Midas shot with my Nikon SuperUltra 9700 – you can see every whisker) but this seemed to be a reasonable exception.
95th Street Parking
Leica M9 with 35mm Summilux lens
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I attended a wine dinner with a dozen or so friends. We sampled a half dozen vintages of Château Pichon Longueville Baron, a so-called super second. One of our guests was Jean-Rene Matignon, the winemaker at Pichon Baron.
Pichon Baron dinner
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Disaster strikes! My blog goes down. We diagnosed the problem and had it running again by the end of the day. I apologize for any inconvenience. The fix requires editing the links to the photograph in every post. For now only the most recent posts are live; we’ll bring the others up to date over the weekend. This has presented an opportunity to apply what we’ve learned over the last six months on topics like indices and keywords and search engine optimization. We plan on relaunching the galleries feature. Things may run a little slowly until we finish the update process on Sunday.
My blog crashes!
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