The Krays

May 7, 2024Movies, PhotographsThomas Pindelski

English gangsters..

The night club scene of 1960s London was dominated by two gangster brothers, the Kray Twins. Identical twins, Ronnie was seriously insane and Reggie just a tad less so. Each committed murders in public and ended up serving a life sentence in gaol.

Reggie and Ronnie Kray by David Bailey, 1965

While the brothers established a measure of respectability after opening an upper class night club which was a magnet to the knobs and actors of the time, they inevitably returned to their roots of psychotic violence and mayhem, their empire ending once they were incarcerated.

David Bailey’s superb portrait of the pair pulls no punches. They are in your face, the submissive Reggie and the dominant Ronnie looking ready to lay about them with whatever weapon came to hand. Bottle, lead pipe, knife, sword (!), gun. You name it. They were not fussy. Bailey grew up in the same poor East End of London as the Krays so he will have been particularly attuned to their make up. It shows.

Two excellent movies have been made about the Twins. The deeper psychological portrait is to be found in The Krays where the Kemp brothers from the rock group Spandau Ballet deliver insightful performances. The more recent offering, Legend, sees Tom Hardy deliver a tour de force performance, acting both brothers. The script is less nuanced but the movie is worth watching for Hardy alone.

Bailey’s picture haunts me to this day. The other week I was taking some studio portraits of a pair of Welsh Terriers owned by friends and, well, I couldn’t help but plagiarize Bailey’s composition. Buckley, the male at left is clearly submissive, while Tilly, the female is the dominant one of the pair.

Buckley and Tilly, the Welsh Terriers.
Nikon D800, 16-35mm AF-S Nikkor, Novatron strobes.

Welsh Terriers were bred to flush our badgers whose setts (underground homes) would cause foxhunting horses to break legs. You probably should not mess with these boys any more than you would with the Kray Twins.

Kodachrome reds

April 16, 2024PhotographsThomas Pindelski

Unique

Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of Kodachrome was the vivid rendering of reds. Just like early Technicolor in the movies.

San Diego. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

Central CA. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

DTLA. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

Long Beach. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

Central CA. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

St. George, UT. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

Chicago. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron-R.

Santa Barbara. Leicaflex SL, 90mm Summicron-R. A beautifully balanced body/lens combination.

SoHo, NYC. Pentax ME Super, 28mm Super Takumar.

All scanned using the Nikon D800.

Bermuda

April 12, 2024PhotographsThomas Pindelski

Gorgeous.

Bermuda is a feast for the eyes and it’s probably impossible to take a bad photograph there. It’s even harder to take a good one, given the abundance of color and subject matter.

These are from a trip in August, 1999 and clearly affluence had reared its more than welcome head as my 35mm Summaron and 90mm Elmar had been upgraded and a 20mm Russkie lens added, but the Leica M3 remained. For once I switched from Kodachrome 64 to Ektachrome 64 and the slides have held up well, not fading one bit.

Lunch al fresco

The ziggurat pattern directs rain water to underground storage tanks

The ultrawide 20mm Russkie Orion lens was ideal for this sort of surrealist image

Siesta time

The island is solid rock so graves are above ground

Leica M3, 20mm Orion, 35mm Asph Summicron, 50mm Summicron, 90mm Asph Summicron, Kodak Ektachrome 64, ‘scanned’ with the Nikon D800.

The vintage Black & Decker electric can opener

April 11, 2024CookingThomas Pindelski

They don’t make ’em like they used to.

I wrote about an excellent and inexpensive manual can opener here. That design works well but increasing pain from stressed wrists suggested I look for a powered alternative.

I owned one of these years ago, but while functional it is quite specially ugly:

The current model

As the image discloses it is also ridiculously overpriced.

So I hunted around and found a beautiful, curvaceous vintage B&D design on eBay.

The vintage EC85 model

I had to craft four 2” stand-off metal ferrules to drop the opener sufficiently below the deep valance at the front of the cupboard base, to permit proper access to controls. Quality workshop time. These ferrules are invisible. The provided retaining screws are very long to permit proper height positioning, and the threads engage immediately. A well thought out design.

The invisible ferrules

Note how the cutter assembly ugliness is largely invisible – compare with the current model. B&D originally provided up to 5 sets of stand-offs (‘spiders’), but my opener came with only one (just visible in the first image) – hence the ferrules, which are actually more robust than the original design. The spider doubles as an alignment aide for the four 1/4″ through holes which are required for the pass-through retaining screws. The major complaint with these is yellowing of the plastic body and I lucked out with a decent looking one.

So if you can find one which is not yellowed and includes the spiders (make sure the screw washers are included), your outlay will not exceed $50 and you will not shudder every time you look at it. Of course, it’s only 40 years old, so it works perfectly. A bottle opener (lower left) and knife sharpener (right) are included. And yes, a magnet grabs and holds the cut off lid.

Enjoy – and no more wrist pain. And I would avoid free standing designs – there are better uses for your kitchen counter space and ‘free standing’ is a flawed design concept when you are struggling with that extra large can.

Pictures from my Window

April 8, 2024PhotographsThomas Pindelski

Thank you, Ruth.

In 1978 Central Park Werst resident Ruth Orkin published a book of pictures titled A World Through my WIndow which depicted her small slice of the world. Taken from her window overlooking Central Park she captured a host of pictures of New York, New Yorkers and the changing Manhattan seasons.

My rather more humble abode at 310 West 56th Street west of 8th Avenue, a few blocks south, offered less glamorous vistas, but no less interesting. 14 floors up and three blocks west of 6th Avenue (“Avenue of the Americas” to tourists) it was high enough and set back enough to offer interesting possibilities.

As losing my Leica M3 to a chain snatcher would have killed me – these were among the worst years for personal safety on the streets of Manhattan – I bought an inexpensive Pentax ME Super with 20mm, 40mm pancake, 135mm and 200mm Super Takumar lenses. Loss of any of these to theft would be inconvenient but not heartbreaking. While the quality of the body was ‘iffy’ at best, the camera was small, unobtrusive and the lenses were fine. The minuscule 40mm ‘pancake’ was especially sweet.

Wooden water tanks abound on older buildings

Night vision

Water tank with pigeons

My local restaurant on 8th Avenue, when my bank balance approached zero. The southern Italian restaurant just behind, Patsy’s was (is?) a favorite Mafioso dining place.

The MoNY (Mutual of New York) building was on my west side on 7th Avenue. The spire announces rain/snow/fog and so on, and the temperature and humidity were alternatively displayed below.