WARREN CONNECTICUT I drove up here in time to catch the late afternoon light on some astilbe with my Fuji.
On this day one year ago: Sunbather.
Friday May 25, 2012
Thursday May 24, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I spent the morning at the ICP in my landscape class. It was a review work kind of day – I brought in some proofs of my 11th Avenue project. I spent breaks lurking through the halls of the ICP looking for subjects of interest. Here’s what came out of that not-wildly-successful hunt. Taken with my Leica M9 and Nocitlux, but don’t blame the camera and lens.
On this day one year ago: Digital Transitions.
Wednesday May 23, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m approaching the end of three intense months of meetings in my day job. This has been a major distraction from photography (and everything else). As I wind down over the next few weeks I expect to return to a more centered and focused approach to this work. Today I spotted myself on a cylindrical chrome column in a building that I was meeting in. I shot it – of course there was massive distortion. The image is a fish eye in the horizontal dimension and is normal in the vertical dimension. I stretched the horizontal axis in Photoshop to approximate real perspective – at least in the center of the image. Shot with my Leica M9 and the Nocti.
On this day one year ago: Still life. The flowers are from our garden in Connecticut. This was the run-up to a party.
Tuesday May 22, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – More interesting public art. There’s a new installation of a work by Dan Colen called “A Crack in the Clouds” in front of the Seagrams Building. It’s a bunch of Harleys that looked like they’ve been knocked over in parking lot. I spent an hour exploring them this afternoon. Here’s a sample, taken with my Leica M9 and the Nocti.
On this day last year: Rocks and ferns.
Monday May 21, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I’m going to ramble a bit today. Maria (wife), Francesca (daughter) and my sister in law are all off for the week in Mexico at a spa having quality female bonding time (and celebrating Francesca’s graduation last week). This means that Basil (the Norwich Terrier) and I are home alone. Do we have miserable litle lonely guy meals, gnawing on pizza crusts and drinking a designer beer? Do we impose ourselves on our friends, offering entertaining conversation in exchange for protein and alcohol? Not on your life.
When I’m on my own I cook. It’s a chance to experiment. A chance to order out for a pizza without shame if I cook up a disaster. Since last Friday (when the women in my life left) I’ve done 7 variants on a hamburger, sous viding them to medium rare and finishing at high temperature. Various blends. When to salt. And so on. Today I looked around for ideas and found that I had a copy of the “Blackberry Farm Cookbook”. I’m a lucky guy – we have a lot of friends in publishing who send me cookbooks. When this one arrived I thought “Ugh – not another farm to table picture book.” I had forgotten that Blackberry Farm is currently the premier foodie destination in the country. Anyway I cooked a braised rabbit, and roasted hen of the woods mushrooms and corn pudding. A college classmate, Ted Elliott, has settled north of San Francisco and has made a career at wine – I opened a bottle of his TR Elliott Queste Pinot Noir (2008). The wine was better than the food. The rabbit was delicious but had a slightly dry mouthfeel (isn’t rabbit always like this?). The corn pudding was fabulous but the liquid proportions and cooking time were wrong for my stone ground corn meal – if I hand’t made adjustment it would have been corn chowder. As I said . .
A neighbor in Connecticut gave me a bunch of rhubarb – a golden opportunity to make rhubarb sorbet. Anyway, here’s dinner, taken with my relatively new Puji X-Pro 1 and a 50mm Fuji lens.
And the sorbet:
On this day last year: Green.
Sunday May 20, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I shot my Eleventh Avenue project today. Based on the yesterday’s scouting I started at 11:00 and worked through 3:30, taking a break for lunch during the period when the sun was directly overhead. I shot with my Alpa Max, 48mm Schneider/ALPA Apo-Helvetar (the Swiss seem to prefer long names for their lenses) and Phase One IQ 180 back 28 exposures, two per block on both sides of the street, from 40th Street to 47th Street. Here’s a sample. The approach is dead frontal documentation.
On this day last year: Rain.
Saturday May 19, 2012
NEW YORK NEW YORK = I’m embarking on a new project: I’m documenting both sides of 11th Avenue from 40th Street or so to 50th Street or so. The idea is to shoot frontally, with medium format, two frames per block. I’ll use the light on either side of mid-day to catch long shadows.
I went scouting for the project today using my iPhone. The Viewfinder Pro app lets me sort out lenses and points of view, and the Theodolite pop helps me with documenting GPS and other similar data. Here’s a shot from Theodolite:
On this day last year: Tom Barry.
