Every year I do some still life images of late autumn leaves, leaves that are past their color prime and have more of a sculptural quality in their decaying state.  This project was inspired after I had read an essay by Thoreau, entitled "Autumnal Tints".  My ultimate goal it to make a book of the finished project.

I am including a few of the images I took this year as part of my late autumn project.  This year I used a technique of extreme depth of field to bring out a high resolution, sculptural quality to the individual leaves.  To do this I took approximately 25 photos of each leaf and combined them later to achieve one image of super depth of field.

To learn more about how this was done and access higher resolution links to these images, visit my new blog at: ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.

1938 Photo-journalists camera kit

Here is another photo in my series on what the well-dressed photographer would wear at certain periods in history.

The camera is a 1938 Leica III in black paint.  It is equipped with a 2.8cm f/6.3 Hektor lens, which was the extreme wide angle of its day and had just been introduced in 1935.  The background telephoto lens is a 13.5cm f/4.5 Hektor.  In the foreground is a 5cm Summar with a fast f/2 aperture. Next to the camera on the left is a variable focal length viewfinder.  The Art Deco styled Remington 5 typewriter in the background is also of the same period.

This photography kit was state of the art in its day -- completely manual, built in range finder, and shutter speeds from 1sec to 1/500 sec. It is also one of the most beautiful cameras ever made and copied in retro-style designs even today.

I happened upon this scene with the descriptive "Crime Scene" tape while riding my bike.  I had the Nikon D600 and 24-120mm zoom with me.  More photos from this scene and an expanded description on how they were taken can be found on my new blog by clicking here:  ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

 

The past week without power in lower Manhattan we lived with candle light, and I picked up a number of photos of partially burnt candles.  All photos were taken handheld with the Nikon D600 and Sigma 50mm macro lens at a wide open aperture of f/2.8 and ISO 400.

This is only one of many photos I took of New York in the darkness caused by the power outage.  To see some of the others please visit my new blog by clicking here: ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.

Looking south towards the Flatiron building the city was totally dark except for the blurred running lights of passing vehicles.  The brightness from the full moon helped to silhouette the building against the sky.  An 8 second exposure with a Nikon D600 and 24mm focal length lens blurred the traffic.  I placed the camera at a low angle to emphasize the color and texture of the street.

There was a full moon this past week which caused excessive high tide conditions that resulted in extraordinary water surges of up to 14' in the city.  This mass of water caused much of the damage to the New York area.

The blacked out part of the city had an eerie look to it lit only by the moon and passing traffic.  This is a 20 second exposure taken with a Nikon D600 at ISO 400.

I have been in New York with no electricity since Hurricane Sandy passed through here last Monday night. As a result, I have not been able to post to this blog.  Since the power just returned tonight,  I will begin posting some of the photos I took during the blackout. 

I took this photo with a Nikon D600 and macro lens using only the light from the flashlight I had with me over the past five days.

Here in New York the city is all but shut down as we wait the arrival of hurricane Sandy.  All public transportation is stopped and the bridges and tunnels are closed.  There isn't much to do but stay home and photograph raindrops on the windows.

This was taken up close with a 60mm macro on a Nikon D600.  I used the lens wide open to throw the background buildings completely out of focus.

As darkness approached the city lights began to come on giving a nice contrast in color between the warm glow of the city lights and the blue cast of the storm.

I had a little experimental fun with this one.  I attached a 60mm Leica R macro lens to the Fuji X-Pro1 using an adapter I found on Ebay.

For this dusk shot I stopped the lens down a bit to help define the background silhouette.

I took these photos today with the Sony RS100 while I was tooling around Manhattan on my bike.

More information and further images are available by following this link to my new blog:  ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.

This is a 1932 Leica Standard camera with an accessory carrying case that held the camera, collapsible lens, rangefinder, and two rolls of 35mm film.  It is the first Leica model with interchangeable lenses.

For more images and description of this camera, click here to visit my other blog: ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY.

This stock image was photographed under available light on a Nikon D800 and 85mm tilt-shift lens.

The same scene was shot as a stock video on a Nikon D4:

I found this leaf on the street and photographed it for a book I am doing on found hearts.  This is a case where I happened to have the Sony RX100 handy in my pocket, and I was able to grab this shot.

Today in the studio we photographed a series of seasonal stills representing October and Halloween.

...and we were shooting video at the same time:

There was a dense fog in the harbor of lower Manhattan when this ferry boat was coming into the dock. Fortunately I had the Sony RX100 with me and was able to access it quickly enough to capture this one image.  I particularly like the very muted color palette.  It almost appears to be monochrome except for the very subtle yellow light on the lamp post.

I took this photo in Times Square today.  I wanted the people to blur and silhouette against the lit up flag so I used a shutter speed of 1/10 second on a Nikon D600 with a 24-120mm zoom.