New York Photography Blog - Volume I

Cedar grove.

Had our first real snow today.

General William Tecumseh Sherman rides in the background.

The sculpture, which is made of bronze with a gold leaf surface, portrays General Sherman on horseback, striding forward, as his cape billows out behind. In front of the horse a woman walks forward, her right arm outstretched. This figure represents victory, and the palm branch in the left hand represents peace.

Okay — I’ve finished organizing the old digital stuff from 2004 - 2005. There are a few more to post here, but basically I’ll be posting new shots.

I’m starting to get the bug to sell the film cameras. That’s my usual M.O. I’m the opposite of a collector since I hate having cameras or anything around that isn’t being used. I wonder what that type of personality trait is called. At any rate, now it’s going to be difficult to prevent myself from sticking the Leica and even the Hexar up for sale. Probably a dumb thing to do - since based on my past (though not necessarily a predictor of the future) - I’ll wind up re-buying a film camera in a few years.

I won’t do anything drastic without consulting with you first.

He really does have a medal that he wears around his neck that proclaims, The Mayor of Central Park. A few years ago, I met him walking on the track with his walker. He was at least 80 years old then - and reminded me very much of my own father - filled with life and energy. Somewhere along the line he exclaimed that he could still do a headstand - and seeing the dubious look in my eye - shuffled with his walker to the bench, where he did this modified headstand. He admitted that he had to hold on to the railing, but still - at his age it was a headstand.

He was filled with adventure stories - the kind of character you might run into if you were reading the later Henry Miller trilogy - and you didn’t need to say much to hear the stories.

One day, your on your way for your first job interview; a couple of eye-blinks later you’re doing headstands on a bench for a guy with a camera. One of the things that I love about walking around photography is the people you run into - especially the older ones with young hearts who are happy to do some showing off for a guy with a camera that they just ran into.

Finally had my chance to wander through Central Park in the snow with the 40D. I think I returned home with a few nuggets. When it snows, the park is left to the carriage horses, the joggers, and it’s share of romantic couples. It’s my favorite time to stroll through the park. We are there because we are like the children waiting for a snowday to get out of school. It was a mild snow, and not very cold, but if you happened to walk by someone as the wind picked up - you’d smile at each other - almost grinning. Still strangers - but connected to each other by the beauty of the park before it turns into gray slop.

Even the carriage driver who’s about to run me over is grinning.

I came across this passage in the book: Meditation by Eknath Easwaran.

“In a glorious outburst Thomas Traherne, the English mystic, tries to put into words the marvelous, ever-fresh appearance of the world to one whose eyes have been opened:

The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold… The green tree, when I saw them first through one of the gates, transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap… Boys and girls tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels…

Eternity was manifested in the light of the day, and something infinite behind everything appeared.”

That’s pretty much how I feel when things are going good with my photography. That there is something beautiful behind the ordinary but that you need ‘fresh-eyes’ to discover it.

I wouldn’t say that everything is beautiful - I haven’t progressed that far in my journey. I see plenty of ugliness in the world. But I suppose that as I become more perfected (how long this will take I can’t predict) - I may be able to see beauty behind the ugliness. For now I can only see it in the ordinary scenes of life.

I’ve finished going through 2004 digital shots. There are about 10 that I’ll be adding to the store. Now I go to 2005, (I stopped digital in Aug. 2005) and so that’s the end of that, and I can consider myself caught up. Meantime, of course, I’m still shooting with the 40D like crazy - so you never really do get caught up.

As requested - some brief workflow notes:

I’ve tried just about everything for conversion to b&w over the years with various plug-ins, and varying results.

This is a big subject that I’m planning to write up when I get a chance but here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

1: The 40D has a setting where you can improve the highlight tone gradation. I’m always shooting with this on. In the shot above, the sky would have been burnt out without this setting. Exposure was done by locking focus, and then recentering camera in evaluative mode. I’m shooting RAW. One note, with Highlight Priority Mode, you can’t use ASA 100. ASA starts with 200.

2: I’ve set up a number of development settings in LIGHTROOM, which get me basically where I want to go with the conversion for this particular camera. I’m going to have to write this up at some point. But the main thing in terms of workflow is to get to a point where you’ve got a good general Lightroom formula for your own shooting style, and then import all your images with this particular development preset. You can then tweak from there.

3. Most of the work is done in Lightroom - but sometimes masking is needed (not in this runner shot though) - and then I’m into Photoshop with some sort of layering stuff.

4. Shots are given a pre- and post- sharpening with Pixel Genius. This subject could also take a couple of paragraphs to explain unless you’re already using Pixel Genius.
But the thing that has helped the most in terms of look with the 40D:

- The highlight priority mode
- Lightroom settings
- The lens, Sigma 30mm f1.4 which allows me to get nice out-of-focus stuff because I can shoot wide open or nearly wide open during daylight (if I want to with a quick shutter speed).

I’ll add to this as I have time with things like Lightroom settings. Though frankly, if you have lightroom, you can easily start with one of their monochrome presets and then adjust it so it works as a starting point for most of your images.

At any rate, I’m back to finding time to do some shooting every day - and this is how I like it. I’m going to try and make some changes so that I’m not thrown into such a frenzy next holiday season. Don’t get me wrong, I need the work - but I could really have used an assistant - so much of that was grunt work. I’ve found two possible candidates for assistant - both have no interest in photography - which I think is good since most of what they’d be doing is matting, packaging and errands. Well, we’ll see. Maybe this last holiday was a fluke.

I found out the hard way that the application that comes with the G9 is not particularly good at translating their own raw file. At least not for me. I downloaded Lightroom, found some anti-noise settings at LL for the G9, and was able to have some more control over the conversion - and now I’m easily getting what I want without artifacts at 200 ASA, and at a nice 9 x 12 or 11 x 14. Haven’t tried to go bigger yet.

In other words, I’m making progress with the G9 and even have a very pleasing 9 x 12 from the Buddy at 800 ASA shot. I know that watching this sort of “live” progress can be annoying; went through similar stuff when I was shooting IR, and then with the POD, but I don’t have an editor to put it together and clip out the useless stuff.

HERE’S THE FORMULA AT LEAST FOR 800 ASA WITH G9, though I’ve been using it at 200 ASA as well.

For the G9 at ISO 800, Thomas Niemann (of PTLens fame) has suggested the following settings in ACR (or Lightroom) Details page:

Sharpening
amount=60
radius = 0.8
detail = 30
masking = 0

Noise reduction
luminance = 80
color = 100

Clarity = 25

Courtesy of

I shouldn’t apologize for posting boring test stuff - but I know that when I look back on the process these mistakes will be important. I still have an old version of PS - PS CS, but I guess I’m going to purchase Lightroom soon (I’m using trial version).

* * *

Oh, and since I’m doing so many tests with the dancing girls, I dug up a little info about them:

Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott (1861-1938), were executed in Germany about 1910. I was able to find his name on one of the rings of the statue. Resolution surprised me.

The hotel in the background reminds me of the Overlook Hotel. I’m now pretty comfortable with the G9, and have it in b&w mode / raw most of the time.

Hazy Shade of Winter (Dancing Girls)

Okay - it’s not Yosemite - and it’s not a Hass. But it’s a fun camera to use. It is still noisy at 200 - though I haven’t given a full noise elimination routine yet. I will say this - from an ease-of-use p.o.v. - it’s got everything, including the tic-tac-toe screen that I like from my old MF / LF days. But as noted, it is still a small sensor with a lot of transistors crammed on it - and no way is it as clean as a modern Canon DSLR at the same speed. I knew that would be a drawback going in - so let’s see what the prints look like.

Sure, I should have gone to the U.N. and shot the machine guns pointed at the crowd of protesters. Or the black draped coffins; or the anit-Bush demonstrators; or the anti-Iranian President protesters; or the other clash of civilizations; or the buzzing helicopters; or the signs of the times; and a few years ago I would have jumped on it.

Instead, I went to Bethesda Fountain for the third day in a row. And every day has been a surprise. The sun was beaming. And today a wedding scene for SVU New York. I had seen them yesterday photographing a corpse on the steps of the met. But today it was an extravaganza. A cast of thousands, or at least hundreds. It took me almost two hours to worm my way over to the overlook spot where I usually shoot from - there were that many spectators.

Fake conflict by the fountain was choreographed beautifully. They did the wide shot with three cameras, one on a dolly, one steadycam, and one static; and a fight breaks out; wedding cake scrunched in the grooms face; two pretty girls fighting and one rips the other’s top off; (guy next to me says, I’ll watch that episode); a string quartet playing on the steps. PA’s everywhere telling you to move. And even a sequence that looked like a bar room brawl. All in that sacred plaza.

Sometimes I think I could do a short book just on the Bethesda Fountain area. There was even an HMI light for backlighting on the stairs which I tried to incorporate into my own shots.

I’ve never seen the show or even heard of it. Shows how out of it I am. I don’t know if I would watch it because it was easy to see how it would be cut together. A slow dolly beauty shot from the lake towards the fountain; and then something happening in the distance on the plaza… You can imagine it pretty well.

They did the wide establishing shot of the fighting three times. It’s simply amazing how many people and how much equipment was involved. The lens for the panavision camera could barely be carried by one person. Maybe this is the result of shooting in HD. They never used to be that size.

The one thing that hasn’t changed since I was in the business - at the end of each shot - there’s a guy that swings the lens back and looks to see if there’s any dust in the gate of the camera. He radios someone on the other side of the scene - “gates clean.”

The assistant director yells to everyone: 8 minutes ’til next setup. The extras look for shade or something to drink. Some put suntan lotion on.

Eventually the A.D. yells - background people - take your places. Position ONE!!!!

They mingle around using all their acting skills although they’ll be out of focus. But who knows - maybe this is the day they’ll be discovered.

Boring and exciting at the same time. The assistant camera man looks up at us onlookers peering down and says, “Hey! Who wouldn’t want to go to a wedding like this!”

As each scene finishes, the spectators clap their approval. Theater with 10 minute intervals between each scene. No one famous since this is the opening and the guys and gals with the white plastic gloves haven’t arrived yet. But they will… Maybe tomorrow!  Then we’ll know who done it and flip to something else.