2016 – The Year in Review

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The year got off to a sad start with our friend Dandy’s funeral. He passed away at the end of December, 2015. Soon afterwards it was our wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a meal at La Cremaillere. February saw us in New York City for a performance of ‘Something Rotten’. My wife’s birthday is in March so we went into the city again – this time to see ‘The King and I’.

April was a very busy month. Our friend Ken returned from Bangkok and stayed at the house in Briarcliff Manor for a few weeks. A visit to the Orchid Show at the NY Botanical Garden was a particular highlight (we went with friends Ken, Menchie and Chita). Other events included a meal at the Hudson Room in Peekskill with friends Roxana, Olga and Gustavo; a piano recital at Our Lady of Restoration Chapel, Cold Spring, NY; a meetup at the Fig and Olive in New York City with my brother-in-law; two nieces and one nephew. My brother-in-law stayed with us for a few days and we took him to Chuang Yen Monastery, Boscobel and Springwood: the FDR Mansion in Hyde park. The month concluded with my birthday celebration: ‘Man of La Mancha’ at the Westchester Broadway Theatre with friends Ken and Roxana.

My wife made her annual pilgrimage to Europe in May to visit and assist children and grand children. This time she went to Switzerland, France and the UK. As usual I stayed home looking after the animals and the houses.

June saw us down in Hastings-on-Hudson for a garden party at our friend Marcia’s house. We also paid a quick visit to nearby Stonecrop Gardens and participated in the Roaring Brook Lake (RBL) annual Garden Tour.

Our older daughter and her family (husband and three children) came to stay in July/August. We also had a visit from old friends Menchie and Chita. We took them to see a Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival performance of ‘As You Like It’ at picturesque Boscobel

Friends Marcia and Grace came to visit in August, as did the de la Piedras and some of their relatives. We also visited the remarkable Untermeyr Gardens in Yonkers.

September took us to Staatsburg for a visit to the Mills Mansion. We also hosted a meeting (about 30 participants) of the RBL Garden Club at our house (one of the monthly meetings that we regularly attend); had a very pleasant evening by the lake at our neighbors Kate and Terry. Old friend and colleagues Tony and Safiye also came to visit.

Highlights of October include dinner with may wife’s dance mate and her husband at Chatterbox 54 in Briarcliff Manor and Latin Night at the Tompkins Corners Cultural Center.

November was another busy month with a fundraiser at Whitby Castle in Rye; A dinner cruise on the Hudson (with the de la Piedras); a trip into New York City to see Spamilton (with Roxana and her mother); and a visit from our younger daughter with whom we went to the “Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest” exhibit at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City followed by a performance of ‘On your feet’. Thanksgiving was spent with a very congenial group at our friend Paul’s.

In December both of our son-in-laws were in town. One came to stay at the lke and we went to nearby Char Steakhouse for dinner. We went to see the other in New York City for lunch at Brasserie Ruhlmann. The year concluded with the annual Garden Club Christmas Party and yet another trip into NYC to see “The Front Page” with Nathan Lane.

We finished off the year with a party at my wife’s friend Carmen’s house.

On the photography front, I continue to get out a lot and take pictures. This year I ended up keeping over 2,000 (and probably deleted twice as many). I continue to maintain this blog, which now has more that 1,500 posts with more than 500 being added in 2016 (average 43 per month). I gave the blog a new look in September and since then have been updating the header image every month. I also reconfigured my workspace to make it a bit more pleasant and framed a few pictures to put on the walls.

Disk space was getting tighter and tighter so I did a major cleanup and deleted a large number of older photographs. However, the writing was on the wall: no matter how much I deleted I was still going to run out of space soon. The only answer was more disk space so I acquired a 2Tb drive and moved all of my image files to it, reconfiguring Lightroom as I went.

My photography library continues to grow. This year I added books on John Cohen, Robert Capa (whose grave I unexpectedly came across in a local cemetery), Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, Irving Penn, William Henry Fox Talbot, Edward Steichen, Josef Sudek, and Saul Leiter as well as books by Art Wolfe, Freeman Patterson and Beaumont Newhall’s wonderful ‘History of Photography’.

I’ve also added a few vintage cameras to my camera collection, but not too many. Last year I said that I wanted to use these film cameras more but I’m afraid I haven’t been very successful with this resolution. This is clearly one to carry over into 2017.

My trusty Sony RX100 model one went belly up on Christmas Day. This would normally have been a cause for great consternation. It wasn’t because I’d already been considering an upgrade but had managed to talk myself out of it because of the cost. The demise of of the RX100 m1 gave me all the excuse I needed to get an RX100 m3. It arrived yesterday and my initial impressions of it are very positive. It’s actually the first completely new camera I’ve bought in six years.

Congratulations to Don McCullin on his knighthood

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Don McCullin on TV Brasil, 2011

“THE QUEEN has been graciously pleased to signify her intention of conferring the honour of Knighthood upon the undermentioned: Donald McCULLIN, C.B.E., Photojournalist. For services to Photography.”

Photographer Donald McCullin with his winning work at World Press Photo 1964. Photo by Nationaal Archief.

Source: Don McCullin Knighted for His Services to Photography

2016 Favorites – Color

by Posted in Abstracts, Landscapes, Still Life, Street Leave a comment
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Light through trees.

The previous post featured my favorite black and white pictures for 2016. This one highlights the color pictures. Again in no particular order.

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Passing train. In 4th Annual Holiday Train Show at Grand Central.

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Yellow flowers. An Impression.

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Green leaf.

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Juniper at dusk

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A float.

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Colorful commercial landscape.

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Still life in blue and white.

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Blurred lights.

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Yonkers by night – under the railroad tracks.

2016 Favorites – Black and White

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Light Patterns.

Another year has whizzed by and it’s time to post some of my favorite pictures from 2016 – black and white first. Like last year I’m presenting my ten favorites – in no particular order.

At this point last year I said:

I’ve been trying to find a focus for my photography, which at the moment is all over the place. I had thought that my primary interest was in old buildings. However, in looking at my favorites I was surprised to discover that none of them (black and white or color) contain old buildings. While I’ve taken lots of pictures of old buildings over the year it seems that I don’t consider any of them to be favorites. Just for curiosity I looked back at 2014 favorites and found that the same was true in 2014: pretty much no buildings. Go figure!

The same is pretty much true this year too: A few abstracts; a couple of wildlife pictures; a couple of ‘people’ pictures; a still life; a landscape of sorts. No sign of a focus emerging.

Maybe I’m just interested in a lot of different things rather than being passionate about a single subject.

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Bird in a Tree.

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Moth.

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Altar. In Chapel of our Lady Restoration. Restored chapel in Cold Spring, NY

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Still life with lilacs.

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Vortex.

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Topiary.

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Self portrait with trash pile

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Make America Great Again

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Abstract composition.

RIP RX100

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My trusty Sony RX100 went belly up on Christmas Day! I used it on Christmas Eve when we went into New York City to see a play and all was well. Then on Christmas Day I picked it up to take a picture of the meal I’d prepared. It started up, but all I got was a screen full of brightly colored patterns. When I turned it off the lens refused to retract. I’ve tried resetting it, but it didn’t help. It looks like it’s kaput.

This would normally be a reason for dismay. I’d had the camera for three years and it had been with the almost constantly. Over that period I’ve taken significantly more pictures with the this camera (probably because I always have it with me) than I have with my other two digital cameras (a seven year old Sony Alpha 500 and a six year old Sony NEX 5N). Every year around this time I do a post on my favorite pictures of the year – 10 color and 10 black and white. This year of the 20 pictures 12 of them were taken with the RX100.

So why am I not dismayed?

First, I think I’ve had my money’s worth. I bought the camera second hand (as I recall) for less than $300. That’s about 27 cents a day – significantly less than a cup of Starbucks coffee per day.

Second, I’d already been thinking about an upgrade. Although I loved it, the camera was not perfect. I didn’t like: the maximum f4.9 aperture at the long end of zoom range; the lack of a tilting LCD (I have trouble taking shots low down as I can’t see the screen); the lack of a viewfinder etc. I’d read that some of the later models provide improved functionality in these areas. It’s quite an expensive camera though and somehow while the old one was working I was able talk myself out of upgrading. But now it was dead…

I’ve never had a camera die on me, but I did leave one on a train and another in a taxi. Usually I go through a protracted period (often leading to paralysis) where I try to decide what the replacement should be. I considered having it repaired (at around $300 too much for a camera that I bought for less than that. I thought about replacing it with the same model (but then I wouldn’t get the new features I wanted and I’d still be out about $400). I debated not replacing it at all and just living my NEX and Alpha 500 (but then I wouldn’t always have a camera with me because they are both too big). I pondered a similar option: don’t replace but instead get a Sony 6000, which is arguably a better camera and much cheaper without a lens (I have a number of e-mount lenses and adapted legacy lenses) but this had the same problem as the NEX: not portable enough. Surprisingly I went through this process much quicker than I have in the past and decided that I would get a later model RX100, but which one? The model II didn’t seem to offer enough and the models IV and V cost more than I was willing to page (and I didn’t need the additional features they offered all that much).

So I ordered the Sony RX100 model III. It should be delivered tomorrow.

The picture above is one of the last to be taken with my old model I. Taken in Times Square it looks as if I’ve desaturated everything but the bright red chairs.. But I haven’t. I really was like that.

This is also the 1500th post on this blog.