Skate Park, II

Winsted, Connecticut

Skate Park

Millerton, New York

SEALED BID SALE

Millerton, New York

Four Ducks

New Preston, Connecticut

Alleyways

New Milford, Connecticut

Millerton, New York

Test Hole

Torrington, Connecticut

Rainy Ride

Bristol, Connecticut

Old Mill

Millerton, New York

57

Bristol, Connecticut

Storm Fronts

Ancramdale, New York

Ancramdale, New York

Copake, New York

On the Street, III

New York, New York

On the Street, II

New York, New York

On the Street, I

New York, New York

I remember a quip from James Thurber, making fun of 1950s American culture (I was a kid at the time), "I want to be a non-conformist...like everybody else."

Somehow this subway entry ad reminded me of that.

Here are a couple of interesting doorways.

You get a bigger version of the picture if you click inside the image. Finally, here are some of the student's prints on the drying racks from last weekend's workshop.

Gateways

New York, New York

 

New York, New York

Ferrari from Montana

New York, NY

I'm sure I'd enjoy a chance to drive this car. Not so sure I'd like to drive it all the way from Montana to 29th and Madison, though. Looks pretty cramped for someone my size.

New York, NY

Somebody else noticed it, too.

Fixing Park Avenue

New York, NY

Last weekend I didn't get in as much off-topic (non-workshop) shooting as usual because of the seasonal short days and because it was too damn cold and windy to stay outside early Saturday and Sunday mornings—the workshop runs on "New York time," 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I'm always up at 6:00, but it doesn't get light until 7:00 and it's pitch dark by the time the session ends.

I thought of an experiment to try. Except for my drive-in theater series, I've never been happy with monochrome conversions from digital captures. It's not a technical issue, it's a perceptual one. When I use a digital camera, I know the camera is making color captures, so I shoot color pictures. I may know I can convert the color pictures to mono, but I don't shoot them that way, it just doesn't work. So Sunday morning I changed the camera from RAW capture to RAW+JPEG, then set the JPEG file to monochrome. The idea was to have a visual aid. The LCD and EVF both show a mono picture when set this way, a constant reminder that I was trying to make b&w pictures. Also, when I looked at the take on Monday, I began by editing the jpg folder, so I was looking only at monochrome pictures. When I'd found a few that looked promising, I switched to the folder of RAW files to work on their twins in ACR.

With the temperature about 26°F at 8:00 Sunday morning, I walked around the block and came on this work crew, paving a lane of Park Avenue South. They were backlit by harsh morning sunlight, but brilliant light was also reflecting off the windows of a building on the west side of the street. I reminded myself to "shoot black and white," and made some captures.

New York, NY

Tree, Door, Wall

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Empire State Building

New York, NY

From East 30th Street, at night.

When I was a kid my mother worked about three blocks from the Empire State Building. I only remember once being taken up to the observation tower. Starting when I was ten or eleven in summer or school breaks I would often ride the train into town with her from New Jersey and then wander around mid-town all day with my father's Rolliecord while she did her job, drawing shoes and jewelry and handbags for Saks 34th Street's newspaper ads. It was considered a blunder to gaze up at the building and "look like a tourist," but staying a few blocks away this past weekend I decided that, 50-some years on, I could afford the loss of status that might be involved in looking up.

New York, NY

From Madison Avenue, morning.

New York, NY

From inside the CAP "Highlight Studio" on 30th St.

Workshop Snaps

Some behind the scenes shots from this weekend's Introduction to Platinum workshop at CAP.

We began Saturday morning by making eight new photographs on 5x7" film, working from the roof of the building and in the fourth floor daylight studio, then developed the film in PMK pyro targeting for the Pt/Pd process. By end of the day Sunday the participants had produced more than thirty prints in palladium and platinum/palladium from those negs and others the participants had brought to the workshop.

Eclectic Shop Windows

Millerton, New York

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

This is none other

Millerton, New York

Fleece Lined Leggings are in!

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Dry Dock

Torrington, Connecticut

This boat is in the gated parking lot of a building that used to part of the home complex of a large manufacturing company. They had plants all over New England, and some in the southern states. Back in the 80s I did a large capabilities brochure project for them, traveling around to many of the factories to make pictures showing off the bustling plant floors, the huge machine tools, and the proud workers who ran them. Pretty much all gone now.