Corner window at sunset.
iPhone 11 Pro snap.
On reflection
Yearly Archives: 2020
At Shake Shack
Up market burgers.
A recent review of mass market burger joints suggested that Shake Shack had the best ones, so I rode the old motorbike to the local one in Scottsdale, avoiding the Porsches and Bentleys, and had at it.
$12.20 and a 19 minute wait.
Big winner for me – the place is dog friendly!
Lots of families and no white trash. The prices keep the latter away.
Porsches and Bentleys.
Table tennis while you wait.
Danny Trejo lives.
Eating off the floor.
An enjoyable, social setting with well behaved people on a gorgeous Arizona day.
It may not be La Grenouillère, but it’s still jolly nice – and the burger was indeed excellent.
iPhone11 Pro snaps.
Night Mode optimisation
A modicum of care does the trick.
Night Mode is one of those brilliant enhancements in the iPhone 11 which obsoletes every ‘serious’ camera on the market.
Those 8 billion plus transistors in the iPhone’s A13 chip are put hard to work taking multiple images and then stitch together the best bits for a stunningly good result. And the device’s outstanding HDR technology makes sure that the dynamic range is constrained to what the technology can handle. No highlights are burned out.
Still, a modicum of care will be repaid with the best possible images. If you use the iPhone’s default Camera app, Night Mode is automatically invoked when needed. You cannot force it ‘on’.
When Night Mode is active a yellow flag appears at the top left of the iPhone’s display and the image ‘seen’ at the time of exposure remains frozen on the screen. When processing is complete some three seconds later – and you are warned to keep the camera still – a second image appears on the display showing what was recorded. If you notice a significant shift between the locations of objects in the second image compared with the first then it’s more than likely that the result will be blurred. I obviate this problem by using a monopod, which eliminates vertical motion which is the real killer here. I don’t bother with any attachment device, simply holding the iPhone tightly against the top of the monopod. The results are peerless, as these two images from the garden at night illustrate. The extreme dynamic range will only embarrass your DSLR or mirrorless monster. Don’t bother. Get an iPhone 11 – these are SOOC, naturally:
Lewis Hine and the Empire State
Images for the ages.
While Lewis Hine is known as perhaps the greatest social conscience photographer of the past century, he was also there with his camera when the Empire State building was being built.
Every statistic about this skyscraper is nothing less than breathtaking.
Started a couple of days after the Black Tuesday stock market crash in 1929, it would be the world’s tallest building. Actual construction started on March 17, 1930 as the Great Depression was starting to rage. It was completed on April 11, 1931, with opening a few days later. Read that again. 102 floors in the center of Manhattan built in just 13 months in an era when the blue collar man was grateful for a job rather than for a handout. The site is that of the old Waldorf Astoria hotel which relocated uptown to Park Avenue, and Lewis Hine was there to record the construction process with unforgettable photographs.
When you visit it – and you should – do what I do when entering this Art Deco masterpiece. Get on your hands and knees on the green marbled floor of the lobby and run the tips of your fingers over the brass inlay strips separating the marble slabs. Perfection.
Arguably three key technologies made this building possible – structural steel (Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Bethlehem Steel), electric elevators (Elisha Otis) and air conditioning (Willis Carrier). This was an era when American companies used American resources and American immigrants to craft great things.
Everything about the Empire State building is nothing less than breathtaking but most breathtaking of all is its stunning beauty.
Modern and good
Rust works.
A view from inside the local library which is one of those ultra modern constructions with nary a right angle in sight. The exterior walls are in steel which has rusted to a light brown and works well in the sun here.
iPhone 11 Pro.