NEW YORK NEW YORK – Can you tell that I’m distracted from photography. Hanging on by my fingernails here in photo-a-day land. I caught this odd sign with my iPhone.
On this day one year ago: a pretty commonplace view of the Citicorp building. I liked this a year ago but it seems a bit pedestrian today.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – A very busy day so I approached the photo-a-day aspect of my life by putting my Sony RX100 in my pocket. I snapped away with it as I went about my business and was disappointed by the results. One tends to treat a small camera casually. Actually, to get good results you need to do everything that you do with a larger camera: see the opportunity; stop; pre visualize; consider depth of field and exposure; focus and compose carefully; wait for the magic moment; expose, minimizing camera movement. All of the foregoing steps take a few seconds but if you skip anything you get nothing of any worth. Here’s the one image that I liked.
On this day last year: Rain at dusk. A lovely image in lovely light.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Back in the saddle with my Leica Monochrom. I promise to write a post about why I mess around with other equipment. Later. When I get around to it. Next week. We’ll see. The Monchrom is my best friend.
I’ve decided to make time to walk where ever I happen to be going in Manhattan. Briskly. The theory is that this mode of transportation will relieve me of the need for other forms of exercise.
Today, while walking, I looked for abstractions with my Monochrom and 50mm Summicron Asph. lens. I’ve already posted a less effective color image of the first site below.
On this day last year: Fishers Island Ferry.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – Back here running errands in 100 degree heat. A detail from a piece of sculpture on the Park Avenue divider in front of my podiatrist’s office.
Leica Monochrom and 50mm Asph lens.
On this day last year: Amtrac.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – I met a friend for lunch at the Racquet Club, got a haircut and then found myself wandering in midtown in good light. First a puzzle, then the answer, then a reflection. All with my Leica M and 28mm PC lens.
On this day last year: Out back.
NEW YORK NEW YORK – This was a day of eccentric behavior. I shot color. That’s right. Color. You don’t see much of that around here for good reason. I grew up shooting black and white film. Processing it myself. Printing in a darkroom. So I tend to see in Black and White. The camera I currently use most, the Leica Monochrom, only shoots in black and white so it encourages this behavior. But today I took out my Leica M which like almost all digital cameras sees in color so if I want black and white I have to convert the files in Lightroom or Photoshop. But this was a colorful day so I decided to leave the images in color. Here we go, taken with my Leica M and a Leica 24mm Summilux lens. The lens is wearing sunglasses, a .9 neutral density filter. This lets me shoot at f1.4 in daylight leading to very thin depth of field. Wide open this lens has a slightly edgy “bokeh” (the character of the out of focus portions of the image), a common trait of highly corrected modern lenses.
On this day last year: Racquet and Tennis Club.
NEW YORK NEW YORK A sculpture installation at Lever House shot with my Leica Monochrom and 18mm Super Elmar lens.
On this day last year: Reflection.
