NEW YORK NEW YORK – It’s party season. Here we are at one of many annual holiday parties, this one at the Knickerbocker Club. The 2010 Knick party was my subject for December 13 last year. Taken with my Ricoh – the party animal.
Christmas Party
On this day one year ago: torrential freezing rain.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A couple of things happened today. We spent a while with Alexander and Laura, his fiancé, preparing for their wedding, which is next weekend. Here they are, with Maria, taken with my Leica M9 and a 50mm Summilux lens:
Last minute planning
My firm had an alumni reception at Morgan Library. We had free run of the collection, assisted by docents. It had been a while since I had been there – the overwhelming impression is admiration for J.P. Morgan. Today’s billionaires build superboats, buy 747s, and collect 100,000 square foot houses. Morgan assembled a treasure trove of illustrated manuscripts, drawing and rare books. What a difference.
Morgan Library
Morgan Library
On this day one year ago: St. John the Divine.
St. John the divine
WESTHAMPTON, NEW YORK – I carried my Leica M9 with a 50 mm Summilux lens around all day. I’m often surprised and delighted by the images that this combination produces – I think that if I were to limit myself to a single camera and lens this would be it.
Still life
Party
More party
On this day one year ago: a not so magic moment.
Party
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
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Our friend Steve Rubin gave a “retirement” party for Phyllis Grann. Here’s an earnest discussion at the party, cpatured with my Leica M9 and a 50mm Summilux lens.
Talk
On this day one year ago: at Bar Boulud,
Dinner at Bar Boulud
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We went to the opening of Honor, Giovanna Randall’s new boutique located on Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district. The men were noticeably better dressed than the usual grungy New York crowd. I asked Maria if this is a new (and welcome) trend – she responded “No, they’re just fashonistas.” Taken with my suitably retro Leica M9 and a vintage 50mm Dual Range Summicron. We walked on the High Line afterwords where I captured another image.
From the High Line
On this day one year ago: 289 Devonshire.
289 Devonshire Street, Boston
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A busy day – this evening was another installment in my periodic poker game – with me acting as host. So of course I had to invest significant time in counting chips, planning Chinese takeout food and of course sorting the wines out and planning on what to do with my winnings. Here’s an image as the game broke up. Another one of those days when I just squeaked under the wire in terms of getting my picture before the day was over. Taken with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens.
Poker game breaks up
On this day one year ago: Connecticut spring, taken through my 5″ Astrophysics refractor.
Connecticut Spring
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had lunch today at Jacqui and Antonio Monda’s. Taken with my Panasonic GH2 and a 14mm pancake lens.
Lunch at Antonio and Jacqui Monda's
And this is from my walk home through Central Park – with my Alpa TC camera, 36mm Schneider APO lens and Hasselblad H4d 60 digital back.
Central Park
On this day last year: Jay Kriegel at my birthday party.
Jay Kriegel at a birthday party
DANBURY CONNECTICUT – We spent Saturday night with our friends Bunny Beekman and Bill Beekman, along with Luke Pontifell, The founder of Thornwillow Press. From breakfast on Sunday morning with my Panasonic GH2 and a 20mm pancake lens.
Maria approves of a book
Luke and Bunny
On this day one year ago: More birches.
Birches, sunset, Warren Connecticut
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
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This evening we spent a couple of hours at a party at ICE (the Institute for Culinary Education) celebrating the publication of Nathan Myrvold’s book Modernist Cuisine. (ICE is the cooking school that was founded by Peter Kump, a close friend of James Beard.) Taken with a Panasonic GH2 with 20mm pancake lens.
Carmelized Carrot Soup
On this day one year ago: Chrysler Building from the East Side
Chrysler Building from the far East Side
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 – 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 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 Holiday season continues. This is our friend Chuck Klein at John and Anne Herrmann’s Holiday party.
Chuck Klein
On this day one year ago: Dallas Fort Worth Airport.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A family evening. Our son, Alexander, and his fiance, Laura, had holiday party. Here are Maria and our daughter, Francesca, looking at ideas for bridesmaids dresses online. Panasonic GF1 and 14mm pancake lens.
Francesca and Maria
On this day last year: Lipstick Building and friends, shot in infrared
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 – 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 – 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 – Another party: a publishing party at the Pace McGill Gallery celebrating the publication of a translation of Giacomo Leopardi by Jonathan Galassi. Here’s a link to Jonathan’s translation, and another link to a Wikipedia entry on Leopardi. Interestingly when I Googled Jonathan (who’s an old friend – he and my wife think that they went on a blind date in college) the first entry in the drop down menu was about his divorce, which was years ago. Anyway, here’s a picture, taken with my Leica M9 and a 28mm Summicron lens, of literary agent Andrew Wylie. Andrew must be here as a friend such Jonathan doesn’t appear on Andrew Wylie’s client list.
One interesting note about this and the two previous posts is they are from social events – as are the images from one year ago for all three images. This confirms my intuition that we’re overrun with social events at this time of year.
This day a year ago another party (that’s the problem with this time of year): tango demonstration at Edgar and Elie Cullman’s apartment.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Another lunatic day. We gave a dinner party for 10, “auto catered” by me. On top of this November is typically a busy time in my day job (actually round-the-clock) so at a couple of points I’ve been hanging by my fingernails in terms of a daily photograph, and timely posting has suffered. As things ease off a bit I’m catching up on posts. Here is a guest at dinner:
Dinner at home
On this date one year ago: Grant Winthrop at an Irving Penn show at the Forbes Gallery
Grant Winthrop
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had dinner with some friends of long-standing at Steve Rubin’s.
There has been, by the way, a week’s delay in posting this image. When I get very busy I can bet behind on posting here, but be assured that I am taking a picture every day.
On this date a year ago: Book signing by Patrizia Chen
Patrizia Chen
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Antonio Monda’s birthday party. Antonio’s Wikipedia entry. At parties I work with a Nikon D700 and an 85mm f1.4 lens, shooting wide open. I never use flash. The advantage of the D700 is very, very good low light capability – it’s much better than the Leica that I use in other circumstances. Shooting the 85mm lens wide open results in very selective focus, which suits my shooting style.
Here’s Antonio and his daughter.
Antonio Monda
Here’s a part of the crowd cheering Antonio on as he blows out his candles. The woman who the focus is on is Donna Tartt. Behind her to the left is Maria Campbell, my wife; to the right is Jay McInerney.
Donna Tartt, Maria Campbell, Jay McInerney
On this date one year ago: October 19, 2009
Halloween House
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – At a book party for a friend’s illustrated book of poetry.
PARATY, BRAZIL – Well here we are in the early AM at the Companhia party – still on our feet dancing. When I woke up much later in the day (needless to say I missed the morning light) I truly regretted the last Caipirinha. Here’s a link the Wikipedia entry on Caipirinha, which includes a recipe :Caipirinha Anyway here’s a shot from the party:
Party
Nikon D700.
PARATY, BRAZIL – We’re in Paraty to attend the most important annual literary festival in Brazil: FLIP. The real reason we’re here is to catch up with our old friend Luiz and Lili Schwarcz – Luiz heads Companhia das Letras, a prominent Brazilian publishing house. Here’s a link to Companhia’s blog, which has a piece on the first FLIP (in Portuguese, but you can use one of the “translate this page” services if your Portuguese is rusty): Companhia das Letras blog. Luiz launched the first four titles in a Companhia – Penguin joint venture today – here is Salman Rushdie and his son at the launch event.
Salman
Nikon D700
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A party at Antonio Monda’s for Gay Talese and Michael Cunningham. Nan Talese shot with a Nikon D700.
Nan Talese
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