NEW YORK NEW YORK – Here we are, on the street in Manhattan in bright early Spring light, with my new Leica M and a 21mm Super Elmar M lens. This is familiar territory working through the plusses and minuses of a new Camera.
Same lens (21mm) but three frames stitched.
On this day one year ago: Dinner at the Fours Seasons.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A landscape day. Brilliant early Spring light reinforce’s the city’s three dimensionality. Here’s the back of a newsstand taken with my Leica Monochrom and 21mm Super Elmar M lens. The idea was to express visual clutter but not chaos.
On this day last year: High Line. Shot with my Alpna and Phase One 80 meg. back.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I saw a potential image at Lexington and 51st Street that reminded me of second picture from Boston that I posted on March 13. I snapped it with my Leica Monochrom and 18mm Super elmar lens. It’s less successful than the Boston image at least in part because the light is less interesting. As I’ve said many times before on these pages: “It’s the light, dummy.” I was also able to get closer in Boston. That always works, doesn’t it.
On this day last year: Fresh.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Here’s a major difficulty that I’m having with this photo a day gig. I’m basically a landscape shooter. Cityscapes are landscapes so most of what I’m doing here in New York counts toward my landscape quota. (This is where I live; if I lived in Indio California I’d be doing sand dunes.) The problem is that landscape photography is about finding light. It’s like trout fishing. When you see great light stop what you’re doing and shoot. It actually doesn’t matter much what’s in front of the lens. When you don’t have good light the trout aren’t biting so you pack up your gear and go home.
But some days (maybe most days) sensational light doesn’t come along. If you try to force the case in dull light you get junk. Period.
So on those dull days I’ve decided to do something different. Shoot with my iPhone. Close. Real close. Or odd. Funny angles. Dark. Indoors with poor light. Push things a bit. After experimenting with dozens of camera apps I’ve finally found one that I like: kitCam. Try it. Anyway here are some kitCams from today. You’ll be seeing these whenever crap light makes landscape a challenge.
On this day last year: Las Vegas.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’ve shot the cityscape out of our dining room window thousands of times. Most often as a brick wall torture test of a lens or camera. But sometimes because the light is perfect or interesting or whatever. Today there was a lovely “Time and Again” moment when the snow muffled the sound of the city and buffed the visual edges down, simplifying the scene. This is with my Leica Monochrome and an 18mm Super Elmar M lens. The look that I’m getting with this camera reminds me of medium format film (such as the Rollei 2.8F, one of my favorite cameras ever).
On this day one year ago: foggy day. We seem to get a lot of these here.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – this post is dated March 14 but as is typically the case I’m actually writing this about a week later (it takes me that long to edit, upload and write a post). My web hosting service, Bluehost, had had some major service issues this week and last week (including a couple of periods of total shutdowns). They now appear to have things under control. I apologize for any bad experience that you may have had in terms of page loading times and so on.
I went out today with my Leica S and a 35mm lens. This is four frames stitched, with a lot of overlap. This is the Municipal Asphalt Plant, an architectural icon that now serves as an indoor swimming pool. As you can see it is being renovated.
On this day last year: 4:30 AM.
BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS – Today we’re having a Beantown extravaganza. There was interesting light, at last. I made my way around the center of Boston with my Leica Monochrom and 18mm Super Elmar lens. At last some decent images. Here you go:
On this day last year: Boston. I was in Boston on this same date last year. I seem to be experiencing time a a wheel rather than an arrow.
