NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is the second day of the annual James Beard Foundation food policy conference, held (as noted yesterday) this year at Hearst’s offices in New York. I spent the breaks giving myself a tour of the very good art collection on the floor where we held the conference. Here’s a view of a Chuck Close self-portrait and of a conference room both taken with my Leica. The Close work is important to me – a while back I appropriated it in one of my 24 hours projects – I posted a typical image from that project below.

Chuck Close

Good Housekeeping

On this day last year: West Village.

West 12th Street

Here’s my homage to Chuck Close, one of 24 similar images of myself taken hourly over 24 hours (with an 8×10 Arca Swiss view camera):

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NEW YORK NEW YORK – The James Beard Foundation had its annual two day food policy conference starting today. Good Housekeeping Magazine was our host – we held this year’s event in the Hearst Building in New York. Here’s a view of a break, taken with my Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux lens.

Hearst Building

On this day last year: One Oak. For some reason I didn’t like this last year. I’m a bit more positive on it now – the image exudes pheromones.

One Oak

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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 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 – So I spent the afternoon testing and working out the high and low points of a new lens for my Alpa kit. This is our library taken with my Alpa Max, a 48mm lens Schneider Helvetar APO lens and Hasselblad 60 meg back.

Library

On this day one year ago: rehearsal at Lincoln Center for the James Beard Foundation Awards.

James Beard Awards rehearesal

Rating: 4.0/5 (4 votes cast)

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – At dinner at the James Beard Foundation popup restaurant. (Note that this post was updated on Monday April 25, 2011).

Popup

On this day last year: a pretty conventional Chrysler building at sunset.

Chrysler Building

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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 – 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 – This afternoon I walked over to the Guggenheim Museum to take a look at the new restaurant there, The Wright (get it!).  The Wright and its architect, Andre Kikoski, won best restaurant design at the James Beard Awards earlier this week.  Link to James Beard Award winners. I ended up not photographing the restaurant, but caught a detail from the Church of the Heavenly Rest (occasionally referred to as “the church of the overly dressed” referring to its Fifth Avenue location) a block north of the museum.  Image taken with a Leica M9 and a 24mm Summilux f1.4 lens.  I took more details of the Guggenheim – I’ve attached one of the images in a comment.

Church of the Heavenly Rest

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Rehearsal for the 2010 James Beard Foundation Awards at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

James Beard Awards rehearesal