WARREN CONNECTICUT – It snowed yesterday and last night, for the first time in a long while. I put on my snow shoes and spent a couple of hours out in the fields around our house in poor, overcast light. This with my Alpa TC and 35mm Schneider lens.
Hay bale
On this day last year: Flying SVG, a not-quite-scheduled “airline” operating between Barbados and Mustique.
SVG
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Last month I set my Alpa Max up to demonstrate its “tilt” capacity (the ability to tilt the focus plane to increase the appearance of depth of field) and got an somewhat poorly visualized image of our sundial. It’s snowing today (at last) so I set up trying to do a better of seeing and imagining the image:
Sundial redux
On this day one year ago: a long skinny Third Avenue from my office.
Third Avenue
WARREN CONNECTICUT – I love it when in mostly cloudy weather clear patches illuminate bits of the Connecticut countryside. Here’s an example. It lasted for a few seconds. I was lucky to capture it with my Leica and a 90mm Elmarit lens. One of my best landscapes of the year.
Baby Cloud
On this day last year: Blizzard redux.
Blizzard
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Boxing Day. Curiously I shot the same subject one year ago. This time I selected a different angle and camera, my Alpa Max with a short-mount 120 mm Schneider lens and a tilt adapter. Tilting is a view camera feature that is available for longer Alpa lenses. It permits tilting the lens and thus the focus plane, to either extend or shorten apparent depth of field. Here I have used it to keep the top of the sundial and the wall and the trees in the background in focus. It can be a tedious iterative process to get focus right with this technique; there are rules of thumb that help; there’s also an iPhone app that gives you a very good starting point. What I don’t like about this image is a mental mistake on my part: cutting off the bottom of the sundial.
Sundial
On this day last year: Sundial.
Blizzard
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Christmas Day. I went out with my Alpa TC today to capture some winter landscape.
Northeastern winter landscape
Our sign
On this day one year ago: Maria scores a Pucci.
Maria and her new Emilio
WARREN CONNECTICUT – It finally stopped snowing around noon. We got a devastating 21 inches of wet, heavy snow. Most of the trees still had all of their leaves so the snow collected on them, breaking or uprooting trees in absolutely record number. Power, telephone and cable and internet are out over most of the state. This is been called the most damaging storm in Connecticut’s history. We have a backup generator for occasions like this (we loose power several times each winter; without power the heating system doesn’t work; if the house gets below freezing there is massive damage to the plumbing). Anyway, I took my Alpa (with the 35mm Schneider) out after the storm cleared. Here’s what it looked like – a typical January scene on October 30.
These images exploit the amazing dynamic range of the Phase One IQ 180 back.
After the blizzard
Fall colors after the blizzard
It’s me again, this time at 6:03 on February 14, 1999. As I’ve said quite a few times now this is one of a series of hourly self-portraits shot with an Arca Swiss 8×10 view camera.
6:03 AM February 14, 2011
WARREN CONNECTICUT – We still have major snow drifts left where the roof was cleared and the snowplow pushed snow. This with my Alpa, 60 meg Hasselblad back and Schneider 36mm APO lens.
Glacier
On this day one year ago: “winter loosens its grip”. No such luck this year. We had a much worse winter.
Early Spring
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A very gray day here. I took my Leica and a few lenses out to capture something moody. Carl Schurz Park lent itself to to these explorations – it has a Victorian feel and is magnificently sited on the East River. For some reason, though I wasn’t in the moment and wasn’t really seeing. Here’s the image that I went out to capture – I liked the curving steps, the barren tree, the background and the very subdued light, but the picture is ruined because of the overlap of the light post and the tree. There juxtaposition creates a real compositional problem, probably solvable by taking a step or two to the right or left. Oh well . . . .
Carl Schurz Park
On this day last year: Salton Sea sunset.
This was the first evening of our Salton Sea explorations last year.
Salton Sea sunset
WARREN CONNECTICUT – After three inches of new snow overnight we had a bracingly cold and clear day in Connecticut. Have I mentioned that this has been the coldest, most snow-covered winter ever? But at least I feel that I’m back on my daily photo game again after a rough day yesterday. Taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60 and a 35-90 zoom lens. I’m using the Hasselblad rather than the Alpa because the external battery that I bought to power the digital back on the Alpa doesn’t seem to have enough capacity in this very cold weather. A common issue with batteries, but disappointing nonetheless. Basil the Norwich terrier snuck into this one, creating another exception to my “no pets” rule on this blog.
If you compare this images with yesterday’s, you’ll see that we have a lot more snow in Warren than in New Milford, which is less than 20 miles south. This is typical. Warren, and even our hillside in Warren, is at least one USDA zone colder than the surrounding towns.
More snow
On this day one year ago: Portrait of Richard Cohen for the jacket of his book Chasing the Sun.
Richard Cohen
NEW MILFORD, CONNECTICUT – A bad day in the one photo every day world. We drove up to Connecticut on Saturday morning (the weather was terrible on Friday night, our usual drive time). I packed my Hasselblad and Alpa and couple of lenses. On arriving in Connecticut I discovered that I had left the CompactFlash memory card in the computer in New York. I couldn’t shoot the Hasselblad or Alpa because I didn’t have any digital film. I didn’t have another camera with me, not even an iPhone. Warren Connecticut is rural and quite isolated – there’s really no place close by that carries memory cards.
So what to do? I drove south the New Milford Connecticut because there’s a Radio Shack in a shopping center there. The drive took 45 minutes because of road construction (it’s usually 25 minutes). This gave me plenty of time to think about how stupid I am and to plot a route back that avoided the construction. When I arrived at the Radio Shack they didn’t have a CompactFlash card. The salesman tried to sell me a memory stick card saying it’s exactly the same (where does Radio Shack get these people?). I went to the Walmart in the same shopping center and found a single 8 meg CompactFlash card hanging at ankle level on one of those displays that retailers use for the small electronic doodads that are sold in impossible-to-open plastic packages. I bought it and painfully broke a fingernail opening the packaging; installed it in the Hasselblad; formatted it and voilà I was good to go. But irritable and out of sorts. This isn’t how I had planned on spending Saturday.
New Milford is kind of a sad place. I’ve commented on this before. It’s a commercial stretch on Route 202 consisting mainly of strip malls. One of my favorite books on life in England is Crap Towns, a listing of the 100 worst towns in England. New Milford would deserve a place in an American edition. There is a village center with large Congregational and Episcopal churches, a library, a town hall and a World War I era tank – reminders of a time when the town projected greater grandeur. I’ve taken quite a few of my daily pictures in New Milford. If you search for New Milford in the search box to the right you will find them.
I was too distracted to get back into the moment so I shot the first thing that came to hand: St. Johns Episcopal Church. The light wasn’t that interesting. The church building was built starting in 1881 sort of gothic HH Richardson – the congregation is 250 years old. Shot with my Alpa Max, a 47mm Rodenstock lens and my newly-purchased 8 meg CompactFlash card.
St John's Episcopal Church New Milford
On this day one year ago: Snow in Central Park. A nice image.
Central Park at 90th Street
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I walked down Lexington Avenue on this rare bright and sunny day. I had Alpa TC with a 35mm Schneider APO lens and a 60 meg Hasselblad digital back. And the battery with the wire dangling out of my sleeve. Here are three images. I couldn’t decide which I liked best. It’s probably painfully obvious (perhaps “none of the above”), but I’ve posted all three. We’ll see how they look for a while and I’ll take two down based on a more extended reaction.
(I subsequently edited this post on March 2 shrinking the size of the less favored pictures, with thanks to those who commented on the choice.)
Cigarette butt
Pioneer
Holland Court Meat and Fish
On this day one year ago: Lever House in twilight.
Lever House New York
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Another cold day in Connecticut. Taken with my Alpa TC.
It's still winter
Here’s a different treatment of the image that I posted on February 12
Clear and cold
On this day one year ago: Experimenting with a pinhole image.
Pinhole
NEW PRESTON CONNECTICUT – A really gray day. New Preston is a small village near us just off of Route 202. Politically it’s part of Washington Connecticut. The Congregational parish has two church buildings: a traditional neo-classical wooden structure where the congregation meets for most of the year, and a stone church where they meet in August. New Preston doesn’t have a green so both buildings are sited awkwardly – the stone church s literally 6 feet from the edge of the road. Taken with my Alpa TC.
New Preston Stone Church
On this day one year ago: a gray icy day in Warren Connecticut. This seems to be a theme this time of year.
Warren, Connecticut
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Back to shooting digital. Over the next few weeks I’ll be shooting primarily with my Alpa TC and its sensational 36mm Schneider APO lens (translating to 35mm terms the lens is equivalent to a 24mm). I’ve attached my Hasselblad H4D 60 digital back to the camera. This results in a very compact camera with a 60 meg sensor. There are no focus or exposure aids so I carry as laser distometer and a spot meter when I shoot with this camera. The Hasselblad back does not have its own power supply (it’s normally powered by the Hasselblad body), so I also carry an external battery that powers the back through its firewire 800 port. Here are a couple of sample images; one in grayscale and one in color:
Snow drifts
Clear and cold
On this day one year ago: An infrared image of the Ferrari dealership on Park Avenue. This has a lot going on in it with the AT&T building in the background. One of my favorite IR images since I’ve started this project.
Ferrari
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Today there was an ice storm – a gray day in the extreme. This is a color image. You couldn’t walk on our road, let alone drive on it. Here’s a three frame stitch captured with my Hasselblad H4D-60 and a 300mm lens.
Ice storm
On his day last year: Connecticut landscape at night.
Warren Connecticut
BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS – My usual monthly business trip to Boston was really bleak. Boston was cold an alternated between snow and freezing rain. This pretty much captures the mood. Leica M9 and 90mm Elmarit lens.
Blizzard Boston
On this day last year: Maria and Luiz Scwarcz at Fatty Crab.
Fatty Crab
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I spent the morning in a snow-covered Central Park. A few interesting images. Here’s a view of the El Dorado, one of three large building on Central Park West built by Emory Roth (the others are the Beresford and the San Remo). This is a common angle on the building, across the Central Park Reservoir. Two frames taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60, with a 300 mm lens on a monopod. This is another example of how well this camera’s files convert to black and white.
El Dorado
On this day one year ago: From Bryant Park.
Prom Bryant Park
WARREN CONNECITCUT – I’ve been experimenting with tilts and shifts on my Hasselblad with an HTS 1.5 tilt/shift adapter. One of the traditional reasons to tilt the lens on a view camera is to extend depth of field by tilting the focus plane; the technique is known as the Scheimpflug principle. I’ve been struggling with getting accurate focus with the HTS 1.5 so I’ve gone back to an alternative digital solution to the problem of extending depth of field, focus stacking. The idea is to take multiple images with the focus point shifted slightly from image and stack the images in specialized software to achieve an image that in focus throughout. See my post for January 4, 2011.
Here’s an image taken with my Hasselblad H4D and an HC 300 mm lens. I used the long lens to obtain compression in the image and to compose it to my taste. The 300 mm lens has shallow depth of field, even when stopped down, and there are image quality issues with stopping down to extreme levels. So I took 9 frames moving the focus plane through the image, and stacked them in Helicon Focus. The process is relatively painless as long as you have a lot of computing power. As I’ve noted previously black and white conversions from the Hasselblad are more like large format film than any other camera that I’ve used since I started with digital.
Wind blown snow, Warren Connecitcut
On this day one year ago: Snow drifts! How about that. Also taken with my Hasselblad. I guess this demonstrates that there are only so many landscape subject to photograph when the landscape is covered by snow. I prefer this year’s effort.
Warren snow drifts
WARREN CONNECTICUT – I took my Leica M9 out today with a wide lens (24mm Summilux) looking for wind-carved snow in fading, oblique light. I was pleased with what I was seeing and enjoyed take the images, but on reviewing the images none jumped out at me. Perhaps this is a worn-out subject (at least through my eyes).
We had dinner with some friends at Winvian, a nearby inn. A woman at the next table turned out to have a food blog. She included a reference to me – an odd experience for someone who avoids the limelight – in her entry on Winvian. Here’s a link: It’s All Fare.
Anyway here’s wind-carved snow:
Windswept snow, Warren Connecticut
On this day one year ago: Luke Tanner’s cornfield.
Luke Tanner's cornfield
WARREN CONNECTICUT. More winter. This was a strange storm – the high winds actually stripped the snow off of the landscape and deposited it behind whatever obstructions got in the way. So the landscape consists mainly of windswept fields. Here’s an example taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60 and the HTS 1.5 tilt shift adapter with an HCD 28 lens. Here I’ve used a tilt to exaggerate the out of focus aspects of the image
Windswept field Warren Connecticut
On this day last year: Salem Covenant Church, Washington Connecticut.
Salem Covenant Church, Washington Connecticut
WARREN CONNECTICUT – A quiet day in the snow-covered countryside. This with my Hasselblad H4D-60.
On this date one year ago: Out my office window in lovely light.
Looking North
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Toward the end of the day the sky has began to clear, but if anything the wind has increased. The gusts must be 60 or 70 miles per hour. It’s freezing cold. I ended up shooting with my Hasselblad and using the car as a tripod, shooting out the car window using a beanbag as a support. Here’s a windswept field.
Blizzard Warren Connecticut
On this day one year ago: Travel day – Francesca at Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Another personal favorite from the past year.
DFW
WARREN CONNECTICUT – The leading edge of the Boxing Day blizzard. We stocked up on food in the morning on the theory that the blizzard would leave us snow bound for a couple of days, which turned out to be the case. Here’s an image from the early hours of the storm, taken with my Hasselblad H4D-60 and a tilt shift adapter that permits view camera-like movements, that I’ve used here to enhance the shallow depth of field. The image is in color but the weather froze the color out of the landscape.
Blizzard
On this day one year ago: San Miguel de Allende.
Shipping
JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK – The hoped for rain turned into sleet, then snow at Joshua Tree.
Joshua Tree snowfall
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – A second day of heavy, wet snow. Accumulation in Central Park is 18 inches.
Central Park at 90th Street
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – We had a major storm in the Northeast today. This is in Madison park after a diner featuring Greyledge Farm grass fed black angus at the James Beard House.
Madison Square
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The long-awaited blizzard arrived this afternoon. The snowfall was very heavy but it was warm enough in Manhattan that it quickly turned to slush – there was not a lot of accumulation.
Madison Avenue
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – From this morning’s walk. Shot in infrared. I mistakenly deleted the file that I originally posted. When I went to upload it again I had second thoughts and posted a different image from the same walk.
Warren Connecticut
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – After a snowfall. This is shot in infrared and stitched from four separate exposures.
Warren, after a snowfall
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