NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A busy day of shopping, cooking and otherwise preparing for an onslaught of relatives for Alexander and Laura’s wedding this coming weekend. It’s good to have some food hanging around just in case people are hungry at odd hours. So I roasted a coupe of chickens, made two kinds of swiss chard, did some beets and feta cheese and eggplant parmesan, and made a variety of pasta sauces. Here’s a sample, captured with my Panasonic GH2

Chicken Eggplant Swiss Chard

On this day last year: Brooklyn Bridge Park.

South Street Seaport from Brooklyn Bridge Park

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NEW YORK NEW YORK – Our friends Varya Gornostaeva and her husband, Sergei Parkhomenko, were in town from Moscow so we had a small dinner party for them in our kitchen. Varya has terrific English and Sergei very good French (as does Maria) so we had enough languages in common to communicate well. This is Sergei captured with my Leica M9 – this is less annoying than it looks because it was at the end of the meal and still mid-afternoon in Moscow.

Dinner in the kitchen

On this day one year ago: A passport photo for Maria. This very clearly demonstrates that I really could make a living at photography, doing passport photos.

Maria

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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

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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

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NEW YORK NEW YORK – We went for a walk to Union Square where we did some shopping in the farmer’s market for meals over the weekend. A pedestrian image, captured with my Alpa TC, which demonstrates once again that great gear doesn’t guarantee great images. This is in contrast to the image from one year ago.

Mushrooms

On this day one year ago: Vietnam Memorial. For me the most emotional image since I started this project. I was in Vietnam in the Marine Corps. Of my Basic School class of 317 Second Lieutenants I know of no one who finished a 13 month tour of duty – almost everyone was killed, seriously wounded or sent home after their third Purple Heart. Karl Marlantes’s novel Matterhorn captures the experience brilliantly – I highly recommend it. Many friends of mine are listed on this wall. Visiting it is almost unbearable. I’ve reproduced the picture at full web size.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a casual dinner at home in the kitchen with two friends of long standing, Bill and Bunny Beekman. Here’s Bunny Captured with my Leica M9 and the 35mm Summilux II lens, my new favorite lens on this camera.

Bunny Beekman

The out of focus portions of the image are particularly interesting. I shot Bunny at f/2.8, where the lens has the creamy out of focus character typical of the pre-aspheric Leica lenses; wide open at f/1.4 it has a more edgy character typical of the current generation of highly corrected fast lenses. The following is an example. In effect this is two lenses in one – how it draws the out of focus portions depends on f stop.

Brick Presbyterian Church

On this date last year: Gallery in San Miguel.

Statue San Miguel

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LITCHFIELD CONNECTICUT – A farm stand next to my regular hardware store. Still shooting very wide with the digital Leica.

On this day one year ago: Subway entrance.

Citicorp Center

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Another heavy day of meetings. We ended the day at the James Beard Foundation’s annual gala at the Four Seasons restaurant (my life seems to be centered around the Seagrams Building), I chair the board of the foundation – here’s a link: James Beard Foundation. I had planned on getting my photo of the day at the gala and came equipped with my Nikon D700 and a fast lens. But as I tried to take my first image I had a major “oh shit” moment: I had left the camera’s compact flash card home in my computer. This is a first for me. I always turn the camera on when I pick it up to leave home to check the battery and settings, and take a picture to make sure that everything works. Lesson re-learned.

So what to do? David Young was kind enough to lend me his iPhone. The iPhone is the Holga of this generation. There’s a bit of a learning curve to get a plausible image out of these things – I’m a long way from mastery. I took a couple of dozen images, one of which (ironically of David Young) seems ok to me. So here’s David on David’s iPhone:

November 10, 2010

On this day one year ago: Out my office window The subject matter suggests (accurately) that I was struggling to keep up with the photo-a-day pace in November of last year – November really is a rough month for me.

Out my window

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I decided to cook today. We had in the refrigerator the end of the produce from our garden in Connecticut: an aubergine, some zucchini, some tomatoes and a few other odds and end. This obviously assembles easily into a ratatouille. Both images with my Leica M9 and a 40 mm Summicron C lens.

Mise en place:

Mise en place for ratatouille

And here about an hour and a half later is the assembled product, ready for final cooking.

Ratatouille

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Dinner at Bar Boulud with some old friends and our son and daughter, who took me there for Fathers Day. This is a silly made-up holiday designed to promote greeting card sales, but I have nonetheless promoted it to our children as the most important day of the year.

Dinner at Bar Boulud

Nikon D700 AND Nikon 85mm f1.4 lens.

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