WARREN CONNECTICUT – Our house in Warren in good backlighting. Taken with my Leica Monochrom. The fishing aspect of photography. I’ve been on this spot thousands of times but I’ve never seen this before. Two frames stitched.
On this day last year: Chair transformed by good light and my Noctilux lens.
WARRN CONNECTICUT – Fog. Lots of it. It’s atmospheric and it simplifies composition, muting backgrounds. It’s a pretty common phenomenon here in Warren. We’re on a hilltop that seems to be a fog magnet. Taken with my Leica Monochrom and 35mm Summichron lens.
On this day one year ago: Yawn. A water tank. Whoopee. In New York. Imagine that. An example of why I shouldn’t shoot color. I find the mixed lighting here very unattractive.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Over the years we’ve developed a park-like area to the East of our house here, systematically clearing out underbrush and encouraging grass and ferns, and emphasizing the large, mature red and white oaks and sugar maples. In early spring the oaks have clusters of small light green flowers that look like nothing and shed pollen like the devil. Visually they lend a light green haze to the landscape – one of my favorite times of the year. Here you go, photographed with my Leica S medium format camera and a 24mm super wide angle lens.
On this day one year ago: Breakfast.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – Out and about a neighbor’s property in curtain filtered daylight. Not bad. Taken with my Leica S and a 35mm lens.
On this day last year: Noctilux on Broadway.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – We drove up here early today, in time to catch the golden hour here. I’ve turned again to my Leica S, which I struggled with a bit yesterday – it’s a big complex system and I’ve been shooting mainly with my Leica Ms for the last few months so my skills operating the S have slipped a bit. I’ve resolve to tune up my approach to it over the weekend. It does produce remarkable files. Here you go with the Leica S and 120mm macro lens.
On this day last year: Gas explosion. Back to back duds last year.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – We haven’t been here for a while. We love Warren so I actually resent (a bit) our recent travel that has made it hard to get here. Basil the Norwich Terrier stays up here we we travel so I drove up today to fetch him. We’re actually going to be in New York this coming weekend for a vey close friend’s Birthday.
I’ve got a Leica lens from the 1950s called a Dual Range Summicron. The DR is an iconic lens that has produced thousands of iconic images in the hands of the most famous photographers of its era. It has two focusing ranges, near and far, and an eyeglass-looking doodad that clips on to activate the close focusing range and adjust the view through the viewfinder for close focus. Very cool, except that on digital Leica Ms the DR can’t be mounted because the close focus cam on the lens doesn’t fit through the opening in the camera body. The solution (which I’ve adopted) is to send the lens to a machine shop to have the close focus cam machined off. It then fits a digital M but in the close focus range the lens lo longer links with the rangefinder so the close focus feature really can’t be used.
Enter the new Leica M, a rangefinder camera that also permits focusing through the lens with an “electronic viewfinder” attachment. I strapped the DR on the the M, set the lens to close focus range and fired up the electronic viewfinder and voila it worked. This brings the focus distance down to .5 meter. Here are a couple of images taken in Warren with this combination.
On this day last year: The Zen of Citicorp.
WARREN CONNECTICUT – You call this spring?! This is an outrage! I want my money back. The snowdrops (galanthus) have just poked their heads up. Six full weeks later than last year. The forsythia haven’t bloomed! I might as well be in Minnesota.
I shot the snowdrops with my iPhone – that’s how I get close to small things.
On this day last year: 11th Avenue.
