NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had dinner with some friends at Pizza Fresca, a local pizza joint in the ’20s with a truly remarkable wine list. Snapshot with my Leica Monochrom and 50mm f.95 Noctilux lens.
Pizza Fresca
On this day last year: Beach club.
Gasparilla Inn Beach Club
NEW YORK NEW YORK Street food vendor in good light taken with my Leica Monochrom and 18mm Super Elmar lens.
Food cart
On this day last year: Hopkins vineyard.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had a dinner at a local restaurant with Kimball Chen. He is serious about his wine so the table setting was dominated by glasses and bottles:
On this day last year: Andy.
Andy
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Fuji has furnished a firmware update for the XPro-1 which I installed last night so I took the Fuji out for a spin today. The autofocusing is improved as promised. The problem with this camera, though, is that there are not a lot of lenses for it – the 50mm equivalent is terrific but that’s about it. Later in the day I met up with Maria and some friends for dinner and carried my Leica Monochrom and an f.95 Noctilux lens. The Monochrom fits my shooting style much better than the Fuji – I suppose that I’ll be putting the Fuji up for sale soon.
First with the Leica Monochrom:
iPhone light
Candle light
You’ll need a bigger one than that to impress her
Now with the Fuji:
Apple store
745
On this day last year: Pudong at sunrise.
Pudong at sunrise
NEAR NASHVILLE TENNESSEE – We woke up after a monumental night’s sleep to a lovely, soft, late spring day. I spent an hour in the morning shooting around Gary and Diana’s house before we took off looking for cowboy boots and barbecue. This was with my Sony Nex-7 and 50mm Leica Summilux lens.
Tennessee
So after driving a while we found a joint (actually a dive) that advertised barbecue. Here’s their sign. This struck me as pretty promising and not bad for an April Fools day (of course the joke is on the pig).
BBQ Joint
Inside it was clear the the ole boys who populate this place are drinkers (quiet and deliberate), not foodies. The barbecue was very disappointing – it completely failed to live up to the low-down vibe. You just can’t trust appearances any more.
BBQ Joint
Later in the evening I experimented with photo booth (an app) on my iPad and with some of Gary’s local whiskies. This is how my head felt.
Photobooth
On this day last year (April Fools day 2011): The High Line makes a feeble attempt at Spring.
A hint of Spring on the Highline
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We stayed in town tonight (rare for us on a Friday) to take some Swedish friends to the Red Rooster, a restaurant owned by celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. “Celebrity chef” is used without irony here. Marcus is a sensation and his success is well-deserved. Think of the dinner as an “event” in very poor light. I shot the following with my Sony Nex-7 waring a 50mm Leica Summilux lens.
Owner of the Red Rooster
`Dinner at the Red Rooster
Wine list at the Red Rooster
Discussion at the Red Rooster
On this day last year: The familiar view out my window. A brick wall torture test for a new lens.
Out my window
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I had lunch with Francesca at one of our favorite places near Columbia: Luncheonette. A diner at the next table captured with my Sony Nex-7 and 24mm Leica Summilux lens. Minor pixel level edits – I’ll leave it to you to find them.
Luncheonette
On this day last year: Armory Show.
Mature guys and nuke
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I had lunch at the Barking Dog Cafe. A burger at the bar and a glass of IPA. The beer turned out to be a mistake – it predictably brought on an overwhelming need to nap. Anyway in the morning I got some work done and in the PM I did all of the prep work for a dinner party for 11 that we’re having in Connecticut on Saturday night.
Anyway here are the iPhone stills from the Barking Dog. One grunged up and the other modified with an app called Percolator, which overwrites the image with patterns of circles that are straight out of Benoit Mandelbrot.
Barking Dog
Barking Dog
On this day one year ago: musicians at the Union Club.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – So I spent part of the day walking around with my iPhone in video mode. I isolated stills from the video using a “frame grabber” app on the iPhone. Here’s an example from the Shake Shack on 86th Street.
Shake Shack
On this day one year ago: Statue in our garden.
A better print:
Garden in winter
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had dinner with some friends at Pino Luongo’s new restaurant, Morso. The “we” in this case is the editorial me; Maria is in Brazil on business. Taken with my ever ready Ricoh GRD IV.
Gil
As promised I’m stopping with the self portraits. I’m expecting traffic to skyrocket. That means I’m going back to “On this day one year ago . . .” Too bad that on this day one year ago I did a pretty pedestrian shot out my window. Note that a year ago I was whining about being busy. November is a tough month. Anyway . . . .
On this day one year ago: Out my window.
November 13, 2010
NEW YORK NEW YORK – More fussing around with my new iPhone 4S. I tried my classic out my window brick wall torture test, shooting with the phone braced against a window sill to approximate the effect of being on a tripod. I used the “HDR” (high dynamic range) mode given the phone’s tendency to blow highlights and the long dynamic range of the scene. It turns out that this was a mistake – on close inspection there are ugly white bands where the buildings meet the sky. After a bit of digging online I came to the conclusion that Apple dramatically over sharpens in HDR mode – so for future reference I’ll be avoiding it. Later in the evening I shot a Martini at the Monkey Bar – odd that this famous bar serves a Martini in a sherry glass. Whatever . . .
Out my window
Martini
The next installment in my 1999 24-houe self portrait project – this one from 12:08 AM on February 14, 1999. As always taken with an Arca Swiss 8×10 inch view camera.
12:08 AM February 14, 1999
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had lunch today at the relatively new Shake Shack on 86th Street. Here’s a diner at a neighboring table, taken with my Leica M9 and a 28mm Summicron lens.
Punter
The next image in the continuing series of hourly portraits, this one taken at 6:04 PM, local time on February 13, 1999.
6:04 PM local time February 13, 1999
BROOKLYN NEW YORK – Today is Maria’s birthday. We had a small dinner at Frankies Spuntino in Brooklyn (that’s not a typo – it’s owned by two guys named Frankie). Shot with my Leica M9 and 50 mm Summilux lens.
Maria has a birthday
On this day one year ago: Citicorp.
Citicorp
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I took my Leica to the office today and captured Ray Bari Pizza in pretty good light. In the late afternoon I was back uptown with my Alpa, a 47mm Schneider XL lens, experimenting with a center filter on the lens. A Center filter is a glass filter that’s darker in the middle – it compensates for the natural light fall-off that wide lenses have, but requires increased exposure. I found that the necessary 2 stop increase in exposure made the Alpa much harder to hand hold so when I need the center filter I also need a tripod.
Master Tutor and Homework Coach
Ray Bari Pizza
On this day last year: Second Avenue Subway construction.
Second Avenue Subway
WEST CORNWALL CONNECTICUT – We had dinner at the Wandering Moose cafe here in West Cornwall. Alexander, my son, observed that West Cornwall feels more like New York state than Connecticut – it has a slightly funky Adirondack vibe. This with my Leica M9 and a 28mm Summicron lens. Local businesses consist of the Wandering Moose Cafe, a simple place that we rather like, Ian Ingersoll, a brilliant cabinet maker who specializes in Shaker-inspired designs, and RSVP, a restaurant that offers French bistro food – Zagat gives the food a 28 but that’s nowhere near correct – we’ve been fairly underwhelmed there.
Wandering Moose Cafe
On this day last year: Out my window.
Out my window
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had dinner at Ze Cafe, a neighborhood restaurant near my office, with Linn and Bill Jackson, friends of long standing. Here’s Bill with my Leica M9 and a 50mm Dual Range Summicron lens. Bill is older than the lens, but not a lot.
Bill Jackson
On this day one year ago: Blond stalks bride.
Stalker