NEW YORK NEW YORK – A friend came ver for dinner in the kitchen. Image taken with my Leica M9.
A couple of new thoughts. I really liked the way that the self-portrait that i posted yesterday came out on the web. I’ve decided the give the “on this day one year ago” idea a rest for a month. Instead I’m going to post the full series of 24 hourly shots of myself, one a day starting today. The first image was taken at 2;06 PM local time on February 13, 1999. All were taken in my studio in Warren Connecticut with an 8×10 Arca Swiss view camera. I processed and scanned all of the negatives. The background derived from a Chuck Close self-portrait.
Here’s the image of the day followed by the first self portrait.
Francesca Barra has a friendFebruary 13, 1999 2:06 PM
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is the second day of the annual James Beard Foundation food policy conference, held (as noted yesterday) this year at Hearst’s offices in New York. I spent the breaks giving myself a tour of the very good art collection on the floor where we held the conference. Here’s a view of a Chuck Close self-portrait and of a conference room both taken with my Leica. The Close work is important to me – a while back I appropriated it in one of my 24 hours projects – I posted a typical image from that project below.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – The James Beard Foundation had its annual two day food policy conference starting today. Good Housekeeping Magazine was our host – we held this year’s event in the Hearst Building in New York. Here’s a view of a break, taken with my Leica M9 and 24mm Summilux lens.
Hearst Building
On this day last year: One Oak. For some reason I didn’t like this last year. I’m a bit more positive on it now – the image exudes pheromones.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A gray day but not quite raining. A poor day for landscape in the city. I walked up Third Avenue with my Leica and Wide Angle Tri Elmar lens (shot at 21mm).
WARREN CONNECTICUT – I got a bit confused writing the posts for October 9 and today. Today’s pictures were originally published as October 9 – probably because I forgot that I was in Warren (rather than New York) today, which is Columbus Day. (I typical write these posts about a week after the fact.) Columbus Day really isn’t a national holiday, but what the hell, I’m an adopted Italian so so it’s a good excuse not to go to the office. Anyway, here are two pictures from a walk around our Warren property, taken with my Leica M9 and a 24mm Summilux lens (I’ve stated elsewhere that this is my best friend ever, lens-wise.) Back lit ornamental grasses, and a Balinese Garuda.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – So I’ve corrected the post for today (as originally published today’s entry had tomorrow’s pictures – time travel or something). This is one of the series of 24 hour photos – this one at roughly 1:00 AM today by moonlight. There was an almost full moon today, making a 24 hour landscape study feasible (otherwise at this time of year you would get 11 black frames). This is a 90 second exposure – the IQ 180 back is supposedly limited to 30 second exposures – the longer exposures resulted in bright purple areas in each of the four corners of the image – in this particular image they were easily fixed in Photoshop. It was very still, so movement of the trees was not a big factor. Of course the earth did rotate so you will see star trails in the sky. Anyway, here’s the landscape by moonlight taken with the Alpa Max, Phase ONe IQ 180 back and 120mm Schneider lens. Changing the image has screwed up the star rating for this post – there are some things that I can’t fix. My apologies if you voted and your vote has been applied to the wrong picture.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Twelve or so years ago I did a series of projects where i set a camera up on a tripod and took an image each hour over a 24-hour period. I generally used a 4×5 view camera, but also an 8×19 view camera and a 35mm (generally my Leica M7). I typically shot images that were set up to mimic a well known piece of art, “appropriating” the organization and subject matter. For example I did a 24 hour series at our pool in Connecticut and a Balinese statue after Jennifer Bartlett’s study of her pool in Italy. (See Jennifer Bartlett pool for example.) I stopped doing the 24 hour sequences after I went digital. The fact that you can put a digital camera on a tripod and set it to take a picture every hour made it too easy and took the life out of these projects;
Enter the Alpa and the Phase One IQ 180 back. The aesthetic is similar to 4×5 or 8×10 and it’s entirely manual – you really can’t automate taking a 24 hour sequence. So I decided to give a 24-hour project a try. No reference to any only other works of art – just a shot of a tree line at our place in Connecticut. I shot 24 images, one each hour from late afternoon October 8 through late afternoon October 9. I’m please with the results and have resolved a couple of technical issues, so I’m starting work on a serious series, again borrowing from a well-known work. Here’s the image from 5:57 PM (local time). My self-imposed rule is that all images need to be taken within 10 minutes plus or minus the hour. Precision (i.e. exactly on the hour) really isn’t possible because of the vagaries of cat napping and so on. I’m pleased with the results so I’m searching for a project with a fine arts referent. By the way, I’ve also included an image of the Alpa set up to capture the tree line.
