…. out of Catholicism ….
… but you cannot take the Catholic out of the boy.
Here’s our annual Christmas picture for 2007 – following the dictates of the Christmas Snap as set forth in this link.
Olympus 5050 digital, Vivitar 283 flashgun with Sto-Fen diffuser, Olympus IR remote, SHQ 3:2 setting at ISO 100
Agreed. Those are two pretty disinterested animals. But why, you ask, the ancient Oly 5050 5mp digital? Simple. Because it comes with a great IR wireless remote and, whatever its age, the results cook. I’m palming it in my right hand above. Here is a screen shot of a full screen view in Aperture so that you can see what my lovely wife was playing right before we took this (OK, these. Best of 30!)
As a Benedictine graduate I know that piece as Adeste Fideles. It’s more beautiful in Latin, sung in a Gothic cathedral.
The past is our present.
I simply cannot say it any better than I did a year ago.
Happy Thanksgiving.
A day at the vintage meet is always fun
Mention of my love of Ferraris in yesterday’s piece prompts me to post a few snaps from a vintage meet at Laguna Seca taken a few weeks back. All on the 5D with 50mm or 85mm lenses, processed in Aperture. ‘Processing’ is a bit overstated. I drop the snaps into Aperture, press the Edge Sharpen preset to counter the 5D’s strong anti-aliasing filter, crop a tad if needed, and maybe mess with the shadows and highlights sliders. I have the 5D set to underexpose by half a stop at all times and that approach really cooks in bright sunlight where blown highlights are the order of the day with digital sensors.
As you can see, red holds no fears for me.
250 Testa Rossa
Alfa Romeo
Chevron
Prancing Horse
550 Maranello
Lola
250 Birdcage
To Catch a Thief
Red
I cannot say enough good things about Canon’s 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.8 EF lenses used to take these. Superbly accurate autofocus, lovely contrast and color constancy between them, and insanely inexpensive to boot. Sufferers with cheap zooms should check these out to see what great optics are all about. Plus these don’t pump dust into the body the way the 24-105mm zoom does, wonderful lens that it otherwise is.
Finally, if you want to see how a real car is made, by hand, click here.
General Motors Building
Date: 1981
Place: 5th and Central Park South
Modus operandi: Walking about
Weather: Lovely
Time: 11 am
Gear: Leica M3, 35mm Summaron
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Dazed and Confused
My age: 30
Say what you may of Detroit steel, few would dispute the assertion that the last time a Detroit product had class was made about, oh, 1949. That’s the problem with Detroit and with GM in particular – their products have no class. Conjur up the image of a Corvette owner and you have Bubba himself, belly obscuring his toes from view, with a can of Budweiser in one hand, a Big Mac in the other. And it’s not just price. Take any small, inexpensive charmer from Renault, Peugeot, Citroen or Fiat and you have something fun and appealing. And as for class, well that only grows in Maranello and comes in red.
Now all of this is hardly news, for I would have written much the same in 1980 when I snapped this picture. (And I had been adulating Ferraris for many years already. A British tifoso). GM had just managed to completely beffudle its Buick, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and, yes, Cadillac loyalists by making all of the sedans look alike. So your $40k Caddy looked like Bubba’s Chevy Impala. So while the leech-like unions can claim a fair share of the credit (debit?) for destroying GM, management must be first in line for that prize. Rarely in post-industrial history has so great a business, the absolute franchise of its time, been so thoroughly destroyed by pencil pushers who don’t know a crankshaft from a rear seat.
In 1981 GM was having one of its perennial losing years so this picture was no longer possible a year later. GM had left by then. You see, in 1981 GM still occupied the ground floor concourse of the GM building in New York where it displayed its wares. It was the work of a moment to see GM’s vulgar display window was reflecting one of the architectural gems of Manhattan, the Plaza Hotel. Shame that it is now owned by a latter day vulgarian, Donald Trump. A Corvette man at heart if ever I saw one.
Today the GM’s concourse is occupied by a giant cube with an Apple on it. Say what you may, at least that business brought class back to the GM building.
Madison Avenue
Tourneau Jewelers, Madison Avenue, New York. 1982. Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, Kodachrome 64.
Date: 1982
Place: Madison and 54th
Modus operandi: Street shooter in a suit
Weather: Cold and grey
Time: 2 pm
Gear: Leica M3, 35mm Summaron
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: I’m in love
My age: 31
Of New York’s grandest avenues, Park can claim to have the largest apartments. Fifth has the world’s greatest view. But Madison Avenue has something neither of those dowagers could ever lay claim to. Chic. Sorry, no word in the English or American languages for that.
Given that I worked in what was then the Citicorp Center at Lexington and 53rd, I used to make a habit of keeping the Leica in a desk drawer and sneeking out from my 41st floor office to mosey down Madison Avenue. And this wonderful European street, for New York is the most European of American cities, always rewarded me with something. On this day that something was this gorgeous brunette in Tourneau’s window – the one where I would go to gaze at the Pateks I could not possibly afford.
A great photograph.
The collapse of the latest bubble on Wall Street prompts mention of what may be the finest picture ever taken of that great locale.
Now brace yourself, it’s by Paul Strand, a photographer who is vastly overrated.
This was taken shortly after Alfred Stieglitz had taken Strand aside and talked him out of his genuinely frightful soft focus phase, and I think you will agree that Strand’s newly found religion of objectivism is a standout image in the age of modernity.
Paul Strand, Wall Street, 1915