NEW YORK NEW YORK – We had dinner with some friends at Pino Luongo’s new restaurant, Morso. The “we” in this case is the editorial me; Maria is in Brazil on business. Taken with my ever ready Ricoh GRD IV.
Gil
As promised I’m stopping with the self portraits. I’m expecting traffic to skyrocket. That means I’m going back to “On this day one year ago . . .” Too bad that on this day one year ago I did a pretty pedestrian shot out my window. Note that a year ago I was whining about being busy. November is a tough month. Anyway . . . .
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I stayed in town this weekend for an number of reasons – the best one of which was a birthday party for Francesca, our daughter, given by some friends. Here they are shot with my Ricoh GRD IV. The on camera flash on this thing isn’t all that bad.
Party
Here’s the last of the self variations that I’m going to post. Here I divided the print plane into quarters and placed a quarter of an image from each of four different times, and blended them.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is a very busy time for me. Barely time to meet simple physical needs, let alone photograph. I did make it out to Fairway to buy groceries. Taken with m Ricoh GRD IV, my constant companion during this period. As you will see I don’t excel at “street”, even with the street shooter’s favorite camera in my hand.
Fairway
Back to my self portrait series. I experimented with what I looked like at various resolutions. Here is one of the February 14, 1999 self portraits, shot on an 8×10 Arca Swiss. In this version I’ve reduced the resolution to four pixels by four pixels.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – I took a break between meetings today to get out into the street with my Ricoh GRD IV. This is a stitch of three images.
BlackRock
Let’s continue the ongoing saga of variations on self. It’s 24 slivers just as in yesterday’s image but I’ve blended them into a continuous image and trimmed off the stuff on the top and the bottom that didn’t blend well. the scale on the bottom is a continuous 24-hour scale – as you read from left to right you get me later and later. The single shot with glasses on results in a sliver of glasses on my nose.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A pair of Bryan Hunt sculptures, Flume I and Flume II, have been installed on the island on Park Avenue between the Seagrams Building and the Racquet and Tennis Club. The look like gigantic gnarly metal cobras. Here’s one of them, captured with my ever-resent Ricoh GRD !V.
Cobra
Continuing on the theme of variations on the 24 hour self portrait series here’s one where I sliced the images into 24 slivers, and built a composite with a sliver from the earliest time starting on the left and reading hour by hour as you move to the right.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – We went to Mas, a new locavore restaurant on Downing Street in the Village, to celebrate Francesca’s Birthday. Here she is blowing out a candle, taken with my ever-ready Ricoh GRD IV.
I mention the equipment that I’m using in most posts. Why? Well it’s because it helps bring traffic to this site as people search specific camera brands that they are considering.
Happy Birthday Francesca
So . . . back to the 24 hour self-portrait series taken in 1999. I have experimented with theses images at some length, for example by exploring the grid. (You may remember that the background is a grid “appropriated” from a Chuck Close image.) I divided the print plane into a grid, and then for each square I selected at random the corresponding square in one of the 24 self portraits. The result is a self portrait assembled from randomized bits of me taken over a 24 hour period. The finished work includes a title and caption. ad is printed 24×36 inches.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – On the street with my miniature camera. I’m slowly gaining confidence in it – getting a better feeling for its capabilities and limitations. I’m not really good a street photography and street photography generally doesn’t move me. A lot of the work that I see by other photographers is colorful looking people (often from the rear) in colorful setting, lacks dynanism and is wildly derivative of Robert Frank. There are exceptions. For example the energetic body of work being produced by Daido Moriyama (who shoots by the way with a Ricoh GRD). There’s an argument that the Ricoh is to this generation what the Leica M3 was to an earlier generation. Anyway here’s an image from Third Avenue caught with my Ricoh GRD IV. Of course my shadow in the picture is derivative of . . . Robert Frank.
Dandy
I mentioned several times in the last month that the 1999 self portraits were taken in my Connecticut studio with an 8X10 camera. Here’s what it looked like. That’s me holding the cable release for the lens (whatever it was) on the Arca-Swiss view camera.