NEW YORK NEW YORK – Some days I go out to photographs a specific project (often after having scouted it); other days I try to meet my phot0-a-day by carrying a camera as I go about my other business. This was one of the latter kind of days. The risk of course is that I don’t see anything of interest, never get in the moment visually, and have to settle for an image that’s only ok or worse.

This, by the way, is my 608th daily post, without having missed a day.

Today the James Beard Foundation had an event for members at Lincoln, Jonathan Benno’s fabulous restaurant at Lincoln Center. This was was with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens.

Lincoln

On this day one year ago: Citicorp Center.

Citicorp Center

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NEW YORK NEW YORK – We attended a dinner sponsored by the Harvard Business School Alumni Club of New York, which named my friend of long standing, Tom Barry, as “Business Statesman of the Year”. Past recipients of this award include David Rockefeller, Felix Rohatyn, Paul Volker, Louis Gerstner, Henry Paulson and Michael Bloomberg. Tom spoke on the role that luck (the “ovarian lottery”) has played in the fortunes of the attendees – one of Tom’s recurring themes. Here’s Tom at the dinner, at the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum, taken with my Panasonic GS2 and a 20mm pancake lens.

Tom Barry

On this date one year ago: Jim and Kelly. May 19 seems to be National Portrait Day.

Jim and Kelly

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NEW YORK NEW YOK – The James Beard Foundation Media Awards were held this evening in an event space on West 42nd Street. Terrific party. Outside there were anti-foie gras demonstrators, who object to the treatment of geese in producing foie gras, because the Foundation has not taken a stance against foie gras (which was not served at the event, but I would have been fine if it had been because I love it). This taken with my Leica M9 and a 28mm Summicron lens.

Anti-foie gras demonstrators

On this day one year ago: Sunset from the High Line Park. One of my favorite images from the past year.

From the High Line at sunset

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This daily blog project is starting to reveal the cyclicality of my life. Here we are at the 2011 Pen gala. Compare this with the link for “on this day last year” in tomorrow’s post. Here’s a link to the Pen American Center website. Maria is a board member and treasurer; she’s one of the moving forces behind the “World Voices” festival.

Nan Graham, Editor in Chief of Scribner captured with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm Pancake lens.

Nan Graham at Pen Gala

On this day last year: fog on Park Avenue.

Park Avenue in the Fog

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NEW YORK NEW YORK – I attended a benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria’s Grand Ballroom for the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. I thought it might be interesting to connect with the Marine Corps part of my background. A lot of interesting people but I got bogged down in conversation, of all things, and didn’t really connect with the visual scene, despite the scores of full dress uniforms. Taken with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens after quite a few glasses of wine.

Marine Corp Law Enforcement Benefit

This was actually my last photographic act on Thursday – barely making it into Friday which was an overwhelming busy day at my day job.

On this day one year ago: Socializing at Lever House.

Lever House

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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

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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 – The Film Society of Lincoln Center held its gala last night at the new Alice Tully Hall, honoring Michael Douglas.

Film Society

Nikon D700 with 50mm f1.4G.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Maria Campbell and William Cohan (author of House of Cards and The Last Tycoon) at the Pen American Center gala at the Museum of Natural History. Here’s a link to Pen American Center.

Maria Campbell and William Cohan

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services held it’s annual spring gala at Gustavinos tonight. The JBFCS is a wildly impressive organization providing social services in New York to clients of all religions, races and ethnic backgrounds.  Gustavinos is a lovely space built into the vaults under the approaches to the 59th Street Bridge.

Benefit at Gustavinos

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