Thursday April 25, 2013

NEW YORK NEW YORK – This was a day of eccentric behavior. I shot color. That’s right. Color. You don’t see much of that around here for good reason. I grew up shooting black and white film. Processing it myself. Printing in a darkroom. So I tend to see in Black and White. The camera I currently use most, the Leica Monochrom, only shoots in black and white so it encourages this behavior. But today I took out my Leica M which like almost all digital cameras sees in color so if I want black and white I have to convert the files in Lightroom or Photoshop. But this was a colorful day so I decided to leave the images in color. Here we go, taken with my Leica M and a Leica 24mm Summilux lens. The lens is wearing sunglasses, a .9 neutral density filter. This lets me shoot at f1.4 in daylight leading to very thin depth of field. Wide open this lens has a slightly edgy “bokeh” (the character of the out of focus portions of the image), a common trait of highly corrected modern lenses.

April Madness
April Madness
What on earth . . .
What on earth . . .
Does anyone know what this is?
Does anyone know what this is?

On this day last year: Racquet and Tennis Club.

Rafael Barrios
Rafael Barrios

Saturday April 20, 2013

JUPITER ISLAND FLORIDA – We flew down to West Palm Beach yesterday and drove to the next big island North, Jupiter Island, which is not much more than a sandbar – typically 100 yards wide but about 20 miles long. Maximum elevation is 10 feet. It’s listed by Wikipedia as the second most wealthy populated area in the United States. From the air it looks like an elongated cluster of large houses; from the ground we refer to it as the “Land of Enchanted Hedges”. There are some really, really tall ones. All nicely maintained. The local hedge guy with the largest cherry picker must make a fortune.

We’re here for a wedding – a daughter of a friend of very long standing. For some reason I’m not achieving much here from a photographic point of view. My eye doesn’t seem to connect well with the tropics. Perhaps it’s my Utah upbringing; my resonance is with the desert. For some reason Manhattan works but Florida doesn’t. So I’ll post what I have but I don’t expect you to stand up and cheer about it. The wedding was today but I didn’t get anything good enough to post. The grim-looking overcast does’t help.

Jupiter Island

On this day last year: Roger’s shop.

Roger's shop
Roger’s shop

Tuesday April 16, 2013

NEW YORK NEW YORK – This morning I took a break from professional cares and walked to the office through Central Park in curtain filtered sunlight. Sometimes too filtered and flat; at other times lovely. Today I shot with the Leica Monochrome: the fact that it’s limited to black and white protected me from my worst tendencies and instincts in shooting this time of the year. My lens for the day was the ’60s era Leica 35mm Summicron v.IV, aka the “bokeh king”. The first is three frames stitched.

Tapestry
Tapestry
Central Park
Central Park
Portrait
Portrait

On this day last year: Look up.

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