Landscape – Page 639 – Woody Campbell

Friday October 28, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – A great day for late fall light. I found myself at Columbus Circle with my Alpa. This was an easy day for me, photographically. The subway image prints at 24×36 nicely and has a vigor that I’m trying to achieve in every image, but actually don’t often realize.

So dear reader, here is my self-portrait from 3:58 AM on February 14, 1999. We’ll come to the end of these soon enough. I generally disapprove of blogs that feature pictures of their creators, but since we got off on the subject of appropriation in art in an earlier post I just thought it would be interesting to post my own examples.

Wednesday October 26, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK – Another busy day for my day job. Managed to have my leica with me as a walked home from 86th Street. I tried a lens that I rarel use, a 40mm Summicron-C. It was designed for use with the Minolta CLE. It’s character is similar to the 35mm pre-asph Summicron, but it lacks the creamy out of focus areas of the 35mm. The 40mm lens is the most compact M-mount Leica lens that I know of. The composition of today’s picture in uncomfortably tight – a result of the 40mm focal length.

Still running through the hourly self portraits, this one from 2:00 AM on February 24, 1999.

Tuesday October 25, 2011

NNEW YORK NEW YORK – So I’m using my Alpa and a 35mm Schneider as my walk-around camera. This only works on sunny days – I’m a sunny day kind of guy so I prefer these anyway. Here’s in image from Madison Avenue and 55th Street

Here’s the next in my series of 24 self portraits taken in 1999. This is from 12:58 AM on February 14, 1999. I slept on a cot in my studio, setting an alarm to wake my hourly for a picture. I clearly haven’t been to sleep on yet because I still look fairly well put together.

Monday October 24, 2011

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 . . .

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.

Sunday October 23, 2011

WARREN CONNECTICUT – I went out hunting for late fall landscape today, mostly in the garden. I used my Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux, which if you follow these posts closely you will have noted is my most used camera/lens combination by far. But I also found a new tool, a new iPhone 4S. The camera is surprisingly good. Dynamic range is only so-so – highlights tend to get blown, and prints are marred by jpeg weirdness (white fringes is the like) but this thing is surprisingly usable and always at hand. It’s quite serviceable for web resolution.

First the Leica and then some iPhones.

The iPhones, with a little help with post-processing in Lightroom.

Finally, what post would be complete without a self-portrait from the 24 hour series. If you think that you’re getting tired of these, image how I felt sitting for them and pushing the cable release, then processing the film, etc. Part of what I’m doing with these ix exploring repetition and the passage of time. Anyway 11:05 PM on February 13, 1999 with an Arca Swiss view camera.

Friday October 21, 2011

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Today we did the sacred and profane on Fifth Avenue. Starting with the sacred I stopped by Marble Collegiate Church, the oldest Protestant congregation in North America and for decades the bully pulpit for Norman Vincent Peal. The Church has a “Payers for Peace” program. The congregation offers prayer for service men and women who have died in Central Asia during the week; yellow ribbons with the names of the departed are attached to the railing around the Church. Here’s a segment of the fence with a statue of Dr. Peal in the background. Images taken with my Leica M9 and a 24mm Summilux lens.

Now the profane. At the 42nd Street Library I spotted the following, which I couldn’t resist:

From my self portrait series taken hourly on February 13, 1999 the image from 8:52 PM. Taken with an Arca Swiss 8×10 view camera.

Thursday October 20, 2011

NEW YORK NEW YORK -I read a glowing review of the World Trade Center Memorial in the New York Review of Books so I made a reservation and made the trek down there. It’s huge. The memorial is the foundations of the two towers – recessed (by 50 feet or so) pools where the foundations were. Water cascades down the four sides of the foundations holes to the pools. The water disappears into black square holes in the center of the pools. The falling theme is powerful given the context. The central hole evokes a grave. The names of all of the 9/11 victims were cut into the railing around the pools. The Memorial owes a lot to Maya Lin and at the same time is totally unique. Images taken with my Leica M9 and a 12mm Voigtlander lens and 24mm Summilux lens.

Another take on the Old Equitable Building taken with my Leica and a 24mm Summilux lens:

8:00 PM February 13, 1999 from my series of hourly self-portraits over a 24-hour period.