NEW YORK NEW YORK – Like this time last year I’m crazy busy. Very hard to get into the moment from a visual standpoint. Hard to hang out waiting for the light to be just right. So I grabbed a shot of a building on my way to the subway. It’s actually two frames stitched – I use the ability to hand hold and stitch as a “zoom” to shoot wider than the lens on the camera, in this case a 1958 dual range summicron on my Leica Monochrom.
Not so interesting
BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS – My monthly trip to Boston is jam-packed this month. Ugly weather. I decided not to go out to shoot, so I shot a four frame stitch out my hotel window using my laptop case to try to suppress reflections in the glass of the window, which doesn’t open. Nice looking construction site. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and 50mm dual range summicron lens.
Construction site
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This is my third anniversary. I’ve posted a picture every day since October 16, 2009. I’ve reproduces below my October 16, 2009 picture, a Jean DuBuffet sculpture, that was my first post. This is my 1096th consecutive daily post.
I’m planning on continuing this indefinately. It takes discipline. It’s been like having a second job. I wake up every morning with the question “Where will I take my picture today?” But of course I’ve learned a lot about myself, photography and my subjects.
For today I got out on Second and Third Avenues with my Leica Monochrom with my Dual Range Summicron lens from the late 1950s.
Second Avenue SubwayWeird Science
I shot an image of an oldter building nestling into the arms of a new building on Second avenue on October 11. I struggled a bit with the very long dynamic range so I went back today and shot the same scene at the same time of day (but with a slightly different point of view and different lens) using an HDR technique. HDR is “high dynamic range” a technique that uses multiple exposures and specialized software to capture a longer dynamic range that is possible in a single image. The problem with HDR in general is that the resulting images have to have their dynamic range re-compressed (or “mapped”) back to the lower dynamic range of the viewing technology, a monitor or paper. The results are usually artificial looking. Some photographers have been using the technique, though, merely to tame highlights and make shadows transparent. So here’s the HDR rendering of the building on Second Avenue. Three exposures two stops apart taken with my Leica Monochrom and 18mm Super Elmar lens, and rendered in HDR Pro in Photoshop.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I took a walk along upper Fifth Avenue on this rainy day with my Leica M9 and 50mm f.95 Noctilux lens. Since I’ve calibrated the rangefinder on the camera (and switched shooting eyes from my astigmatic right to my good left eye), I’ve been getting uniformly interesting results with this lens, which has the ability to render the mundane as poetry. Some examples:
Construction sitePoliticianUS
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Here’s one of the many construction sites for the 2nd Avenue Subway rendered with my Leica M9 and 35mm Summilux lens.
2nd Avenue subway construction
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A friend who’s the Head of the Browning School took us on a tour of a major construction project that the school has undertaken. This from the boiler room; taken with my Leica M9 and an 18mm lens.
Boiler room
So I was walking down the street and spotted a big shrub that was in bloom and it looked like a lilac. Same shape leaves. Same color leaves. Similar shape bush. Small lilac-colored flowers brow in grape-like clusters, but have a yellow center. No real scent. But it’s late July and lilacs bloom in the late spring, so what is this thing. I shot it with my iPhone. Any ideas?
Lilac look-alike
More film scans from Milan. One thing is clear: as I’ve previously noted this project (a daily photo blog) would be something between very hard and impossible shooting film. Here I am still posting from Milan two weeks after our return. The fact is that my Imacon scanner grinds through one frame at a time so a roll of film is a lot of work. I do love the scans that it produces, though.
