NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Dinner with Gary and Diana Fisketjon. Photographically there was a lot of interest – the Fisketjons recently moved to a loft on the very top floor of a building in the financial district (next to the New York Fed) that has been converted to residential use. Out the windows there are marvelous eagle gargoyles and views of lower Manhattan. I concentrated on the gargoyles (which face outward, so from the apartment we see their backs). What I learned on editing the pictures is that the backs of gargoyles are no more interesting than the backs of people. So out of a large group of photos from the evening I selected one of Gary. Nikon D700 with 50mm f1.4 (my usual night interior kit).
Tuesday May 11, 2010
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – My meetings are at Park Avenue and 53rd Street so I managed to commune with my old friend Hello Kitty for a few minutes. You will remember from previous posts that Hello Kitty is Tom Sach’s statue in the sculpture garden at Lever House. See March 19 blog entry and April 20 blog entry. There may be enough going on at Lever House to make a project out of it.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This is going to be a rough week in the photo-a-day department. My day job is invading this space. I’ve got round the clock meetings Tuesday through Friday and heavy preparation for them on Monday. I won’t have much time for posts, so they will be delayed for a few days. Mostly work dinners that I can’t photograph. I managed to walk a couple of blocks in the morning on Lexington Avenue I got this.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – Birthday party for Bunny Beekman at Andrew Solomon’s.
Saturday May 8, 2010
WARREN, CONNECTICUT – Well I’m going to have to apologize for this one. I’ve said that I never shoot sunsets. The problem with them is that they happen every day. It’s hard to find an unusual angle or an edgy point of view. What am I going to add to the lore of sunsets?
A few years ago an artist friend painted a trompe-l’œil sky on the ceiling of our living room in Connecticut. We asked for a Tiepolo sky. Instead he painted an El Greco – a gray, brooding sky – because that’s what the sky looks like in Connecticut. Well the May 8 sunset was pretty much a Tiepolo sky – the light was sensational. Shot with a Leica M9 and a 50mm Summilux lens, four exposures stitched together and cropped to a 2×3 aspect ratio. I desaturated the blues in Photoshop – they were over the top. I’ve pasted a copy of Tiepolo’s Allegory of the Planets and Continents for comparison.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – This afternoon I walked over to the Guggenheim Museum to take a look at the new restaurant there, The Wright (get it!). The Wright and its architect, Andre Kikoski, won best restaurant design at the James Beard Awards earlier this week. Link to James Beard Award winners. I ended up not photographing the restaurant, but caught a detail from the Church of the Heavenly Rest (occasionally referred to as “the church of the overly dressed” referring to its Fifth Avenue location) a block north of the museum. Image taken with a Leica M9 and a 24mm Summilux f1.4 lens. I took more details of the Guggenheim – I’ve attached one of the images in a comment.
Thursday May 6, 2010
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – From a sunset walk on the High Line. Here’s a link for more information about the High Line: Link to High Line site. Leica M9 and 90mm Elmarit. I’ve changed the image on this page after having second thoughts on the selection of the May 6 image.