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NEW YORK NEW YORK – Out with my Leica and 90mm lens I caught this in the failing light.
On this day last year: 9-11 memorial.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Out with my Leica and 90mm lens I caught this in the failing light.
On this day last year: 9-11 memorial.
MEW YORK NEW YORK – Well here I am outside the headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. I’ve written a couple of other posts on this subject: August 24, 2011 and November 24, 2010. I’m standing here because this is the only place within blocks where any sunlight is hitting the street. I loaded a bunch of camera apps on my iPhone and went looking for a scene with a long dynamic range and some bricks to test the apps. Here’s the one taken with an app called Pro HDR, which takes two images at different exposures and combines them in a “high dynamic range” images. The HDR feature is only so-so. Without a tripod the camera moves between shots. The app compensates for movement but the image appears less sharp than a non HDR image. It does give you the two exposures, though so you have a choice of which to use – here I used the under-exposed shot.
So the iPhone camera is working well for me. We’re planning a trip to DC this weekend. I’m taking the iPhone as my only camera.
On this day last year: shot with very cool wide angle lens.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Another hectic day as we stuff five adults, a Norwich Terrier and food for four days into the car for the trip to Connecticut. Here we are at our parking garage waiting for our car. Taken with m Leica M9 and 12mm Voigtlander lens.
On this day one year ago: Kimball declaims on a bottle from Gaja,
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – While I was in Africa Phase One released a firmware update to the IQ 180 back that enables “live view”, the ability to view on the back’s lcd screen what the camera is seeing in real time. Live view is commonplace in consumer cameras, which use CMOS technology, but is difficult to implement in medium format cameras which use CCD technology. I downloaded the update and installed it and voila it worked. Live view is a boon to technical camera users because it permits composition on the back’s lcd monitor while using shifts. I set the back up on my Alpa Max with my 72mm Schneider Digitar and took the following out my window (with the back shifted up 15mm and to the right 17mm),

New York Rooftop
On this day last year: Trancoso at night.

Trancoso
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m writing this about a week after I took the picture for May 16. The one week delay in posting gives me a chance to sort through images hopefully making an non-rushed decision on what to post. The scene out my window was the same as it was then and has been unchanged all month. We’ve had the rainiest May in memory. It’s as if the weather system has its coasts mixed up – you might expect this in Seattle but not here. This is three frames stitched with my Leica M9 and 135mm APO Telyt.

Rooftops in the fog
On this day one year ago: farm stand.

Farmstand
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I have better days and worse days. This was one of the better. Sometimes it is enough just to go through your routine day with a camera in hand. It helps that it’s Spring. I met Francesca (our daughter) at J. McLaughlin where she was picking up a birthday present for her fiance, and for a coffee.
the way regular visitors (thanks to all of you) may notice that I’ve changed the galleries to the right. I’ve added a collection pulled together from the Litchfield County Connecticut churches that I’ve been exploring for the last 16 months, and a series of timed exposures taken out of the window of a high speed train in China. Let me know what you think.
These were taken with my Panasonic GH2 and the wonderful 14mm pancake lens

J McLaughlin
Same setup. I’m using a crop of this as my blog header.

East 95th Street
On this day last year: Bill Cohan and Maria at the Pen gala.

Maria Campbell and William Cohan
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I took a walk this morning looking for signs of Spring in Manhattan. Not much luck on the Upper East Side. A few flowering trees in early stages of their Spring displays. Not impressive. This with my Leica M9 and the Bokeh King.

Looking for Spring
On this day last year: Fort Green near the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Fort Greene near the Brooklyn Navy Yard
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent a few hours sorting out my Alpa Max today. Alpa provides the ability to shim the back adapter to achieve perfect focus. This requires an object to focus on that’s a long ways away; I used the Triboro Bridge out my dining room window. I was also able to work out corrections for the color shifts across the frame that result from putting a digital back on a technical camera. Late in the afternoon the light and the sky turned interesting so I captured this (a two frame panorama):

Out my window
On this day one year ago: a truly uninteresting IR image of the World Trade Center construction site.

World Trade Center Construction Site
NEW YORK, HEW YORK – An SUV that had the misfortune to be parked on the street during the three snowstorms that hit New York while we were away. The snow quickly passes from a beautiful white blanket hiding the City’s flaws to a dirty eyesore. Taken with my Leica.

Reality
On this date last year: An infrared image from Connecticut, stitched from four images.

Warren, after a snowfall
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I promise that I’m going to quit this. I mean the wide angle thing. Quit it real soon now. Maybe it’s becoming a crutch. Or worse. My name’s Woody and I’m a wide angle junkie. But later. Maybe. For now I had my Leica and my super wide lens in hand as I walked by the Guggenheim earlier today. If you’ve been following these pages closely you’ll know that the Guggenheim is the one icon that I’ve been struggling with. Well today with Mr. wide I caught it – the first image of the museum that I’m really happy with. Here it is (this is another one of those shot straight up images that could be oriented any of four ways, but I prefer this orientation):

On this day one year ago: Warren Congregational Church.

Warren, Connecticut
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Another full day of meetings. The light first thing in the morning was sensational. For this image I had a 16mm Voigtlander lens on my Leica. Shooting very wide presents a lot of challenges – the wide frame assures that there are extremes in terms of dynamic range, and that either the sun or the photographer’s shadow in the frame.

On this day one year ago: Pay telephone bank in Grand Central Terminal. Here’s an example of old technology baked in concrete, plastic and steel.

Grand Central Terminal - Lower Level
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Starbucks, 87th Street and Lexington Avenue. Could be anywhere in the world.

Starbuck's
Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron v. IV.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Here we are on a dull Friday the 13th. Spent most of the day organizing for Africa trip. Uninspired in terms of photography. This is out our window.

Out my window
Nikon D700
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – On the way to pick up my car to drive to Bridgehampton for a meeting a caught the northern facade of 1185 Park Avenue in wonderful morning light. Not much going on visually in the Hamptons so I’m posting this.

1185 Park Avenue
Leica M9 with 50mm Summilux Asph. lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Barking Dog Cafe, snapped from a car while stopped at a stoplight.

The Barking Dog Cafe
Leica M9 and 50mm Summilux lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This is out the window of our 11th floor apartment, looking into our courtyard. Our building is doing “Local Law 10″ work on the exterior. Local law 10, which requires periodic inspection and repairs of building facades, was enacted in 1980 after a piece of terra cotta masonry fell from the facade of an Upper West Side building and killed a passing college student.

1185 Park Avenue - Local Law 10 work
Hasselblad H3D 39 with HC 300 lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Dinner at Centolire with an old friend, Steve Rubin. Here’s the view out the window across 86th Street.

East 86th Street
Nikon D700.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – It’s possible to walk most of the way around Manhattan on the water. This is a relatively recent development = there are gaps (for example on the East side in the 50s) but construction continues. To an important extent this relieves the sense the Manhattan is cut off from the water by major highways (the Westside Highway and the FDR Drive). Anyway, here we are on the East River in the 60s.

Leica M9 and 50mm Summilux lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I spent the late afternoon stalking reflected sunlight out the window of our dining room.

Out my window
Hasselblad H3D with HC 300 lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Back from Connecticut and a rainy weekend. I had spent the weekend putting a relatively new (to me) camera through its paces, a Nikon D700. I plan on using the D700 primarily for available light photograph in poor light, so I’ve put it back in its bag to wait for the next party, wedding, dinner or whatever. For street use I’m back to my trusty Leica M9, which I prefer as long as there’s enough light to manually focus. This picks up on my “Look up – don’t worry of it makes you look like a tourist” theme.

Lexington Avenue and 93rd Street
Leica M9 and 35mm Summicron Asph.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – While walking on East 68th Street today I stumbled on a fashion shoot in progress – probably for a catalogue based on the wardrobe.:

Catalogue shoot, East 68th Street
Hasselblad H3D 39 with HC 100 lens.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had dinner at Island, a restaurant near us on Madison Avenue, with Alexander (our son), Laura (his girlfriend) and Laura’s parents. This is a rare image of Maria.

Maria
Nikon D700 50mm f1.4G lens.
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
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – 12 11 Park Avenue. Limited time spent shooting today – most of my day was spent diagnosing and fixing the causes of this blog’s crash. I think I have it sorted out, but the fix breaks the link to the photo in every post (there are now more than 180 of them) so I have to repair every link manually. I’musing this as an opportunity to apply what I’ve learned in the past six months on indexing and key words, so the process is time consuming.

1211 Park Avenue
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Congregation Shaaray Tefila (Hebrew for Gates of Prayer) at Second Avenue and 79th Street. The current sanctuary of this congregation, which was organized in 1859, was dedicated in 1959. It was converted from a Trans-Lux movie theater. I’ve taken the liberty of posting the image twice – once in color and once in gray scale.

Congregation Shaaray Tefila (Hebrew for Gates of Prayer)

Congregation Shaaray Tefila
