A stroke of luck.
I was mooching around North Beach, the Italian section of north east San Francisco, and chanced on an interesting clothing store. All the help was busy so I sneaked into the workroom in the back and Pow! There it was. All I did was press the button.
Nikon D3x, 35mm AF-S f/1.4 Nikkor at f/1.4, ISO 800. The Nikkor may lack the raw resolving power of the 35mm Sigma equivalent at full bore, but it holds up nicely here.
No yuppies allowed.
The Saloon on Grant Street in San Francisco’s North Beach lays claim to being the oldest bar in the city, having survived the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fire. Built in 1861 it’s definitely a down at heels, drinker’s blues bar, and the locals look askance at strangers. I swear the temperature dropped ten degrees when yours truly stepped inside for a look around. I attribute this climatic change to my newly acquired black felt cap allied with a somewhat less than new Belstaff biker jacket which gives me a real Bad A look.
My best guess was that a candid snap or two might find me leaving with my teeth in my hand, so I asked the pretty radical barkeep if it was OK. The English accent immediately consigns one to the cadre of nutty eccentrics, with condescending acquiescence following, and the man grudgingly agreed.
Sign heaven.
We are all essentially alone.
Nikon D3x, 35mm AF-S f/1.4 Nikkor at f/2.
Fierce.
So fierce was the gaze of this man I thought he might devour the camera.
Nikon D3x, 35/1.4 AF-S Nikkor at f/2.8.
Gone, not forgotten.
…. and his ghoulish choristers.
Nikon D3x, 35mm f/2 MF pre-Ai Nikkor at f/4.
A long time favorite.
The Turkish photographer Ara Guler is one I have followed for well over thrity years now, first encountering him in the pages of Leica Fotografie which featured him as a ‘Master of the Leica’. Regardless of the hardware, Güler is a master photographer.
His work is predominately photo-journalistic but there’s none of the bad taste or excess frequently seen in that genre. Rather, his images are invariably thought out, sensitive and always beautiful.
Just look at some of the giants he has photographed – Winston Churchill, Indira Gandhi, Maria Callas, John Berger, Bertrand Russell, Willy Brandt, Alfred Hitchcock, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalà and Pablo Picasso. Compare that lot to the dispticks running nations and the fakes passing themselves off as artists today.
You can see more of his work by clicking the image below:
The link there to his web site is broken, but you can see many of his images by clicking the one above.