NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHER’S BLOG

Also infrared. I doubt whether the tower clock has ever been shot with infrared. It shows the wear and tear, and which parts are clean, which parts covered with New York grime. It’s hard to believe the detail in that clock. The face is formed with small mosaic tiles.  Beyond the black dot circle, sea creatures and vines and grapes and shells, and then the larger strange creatures that look like someone has had a bad acid trip. Those were the days of barons and old boys that could afford to put up cathedrals to business.

I was sent on a mission to photograph the New York Life Building. I couldn’t get inside because of the guards, and while I was outside the building I was also approached by two guards who wanted to know what I was up to.

Anyway, I got a few decent shots of it but I did better with some other nearby buildings. Used infrared for most of the shots but had both cameras around my neck, often getting tangled up. So I was shooting street shots one minute and architecture the next.

The top of the Flat Iron building appeared to me in a way I hadn’t seen before: almost like the prow of an ocean liner cutting through the sky.

Carriage horse, central park. More infrared flash experiments.

Infrared film with infrared flash at night.

On the way to meet the film crew, I took this “throw away shot.” By throw away, I mean that I’ve done it many times before, since it’s the only angle I’ve found to show the whole museum, and went on to do my stuff at the zoo. This turns out to be the my best shot of the museum. In other words, I’ve gone at night to shoot it; on rainy days, at noon, with wider lenses, etc. and the contrast / texture in this shot because of the infrared effect which most people wouldn’t notice if I didn’t say it was infrared seems to have finally done the trick.

And of course there were always other issues. For a long time various parts of the exterior had scaffolding, or there weren’t enough people on the steps, or too many cars in the way… but it fits in with my idea that it is on the way to where I’m going rather than the ultimate destination where I find something that works. If I ever do another book, I think that On The Way would be a good title.

Again – not exactly pretty – but still interesting effect using an infrared flash at night with modded infrared camera during snow storm.  Nothing you couldn’t do with non-infrared flash during a night storm – but be careful the flash unit doesn’t get wet.

Infrared, Battery Park

My friends – my outing was not fruitful.  I was at a small quad theater.  A number of issues:

1) It’s a flick for kids (Aliens v. Monsters) and kids with their parents, not easy to do in this situation.

2) The glasses are no longer red / blue but are polarized with slight tints, and the effect is different from the paper glasses

3) I couldn’t find a place to situate myself.  Only spot to stand up and shoot from is the center aisle; so you are standing right in the middle of the theater with the bright screen behind you.

4) Towards the end of the movie, at least maybe the last 20 minutes, someone from the theater sits in the back to collect the glasses.

5) The 450 could not focus quickly enough in this darkness, so I shot manual.

(Oh – the movie.  Once you took off the glasses so that stuff wasn’t flying at you, it was just a cartoon for kids; with a moral – of course.  Neither complex, nor idiotic. )

6) The ready light is blinking on the back of the flash.  I kept my thumb over it when I did manage a couple of shots.

I could go on, but to do this Weegee sort of shot you need permission and I would say a much larger theater, with an apron – some space between the front rows and the audience.  So I post a shot or two just so you get the idea of the difficulty (oh, and the theater was only maybe 1/3 full) which was the final problem.  All that being said, here’s a shot or two:

It was so dark, that I could just make out shapes as I shot.  I definitely didn’t see that the kid didn’t have his glasses on.  And the guy below – I thought there was a kid with him, but I don’t see same in picture.

The stars may have finally come together for my next project.  The 3-d movie,  Monsters vs. Aliens, is playing in New York – and I plan to take my infrared outfit into the theater today and see what I can do ( a la Weegee).  I don’t expect to be able to recreate his famous shot – that would be too great – but hopefully I’ll be able to get a seat in the front row  and during the show get enough distance between me and the audience to take some infrared digital shots with my infrared flash.

It’s complicated – technically – because you really want to have the camera fairly far from the first seats in the frame so that the difference in flash exposure isn’t too much from the nearest to the furthest objects (uhm make that people with 3-d glasses).  Also, since I don’t exactly have permission to stand in the front and take pictures of the audience – that adds a bit of a handicap to the project.  I’ve already decided to use the 30mm lens, since the infrared flash won’t cover the wider 20mm.

So I sit for a while with the flash and try and figure out what f-stop I want to try for so that I can get the best depth of field, but still get enough flash to illuminate the audience, and also not blow out the people who are nearest the flash and if possible, be able to recycle the flash quickly to take as many shots as I can once I stand up in a corner.  Of course, if I had permission to do this – it would be easy, and I could do a bit of trial and error and get it pretty quickly – but this will have to be surreptitious.

Throw in one more factor – I don’t exactly get up out of my chair like lightning right now because my back is still sore — and you’ve got a nifty little project.

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I met these two guys I know from the local butcher store and was able to get a shot at that moment when they are just beginning to pose.  The guy on the right – Tomas – is a crack-up and was just starting to make a face at the camera. Anyway, fun to get out and about again.

This is from two years ago.  I will stay inside today (first day I awoke and got out of bed with out groaning because of my back), but tomorrow , if the weather exists in any form, I’ll go out with the infrared camera.  12 megapixels of New York Spring should be great.  Many of the old HIE film shots were barely useable (like this one) until I worked on them in Lightroom.  Well, maybe not that they weren’t usable – but I couldn’t get what I had in mind.  In this case, I wanted that black pool under the tree with just the touch of the guy sitting there reading the paper.  Some detail in the grass in the foreground and the sunbather – blistered out.  I could’ve done it in photoshop, but didn’t feel like drawing masks.  This was all done without masks.

My back is slowly healing – but in the meantime I’m still going through some of the old shots.  This is infrared season.  So it’s hard to stay inside, but I’ll force myself for one more day.  I don’t want to re-injure the back again.

“Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark.  And has the nature of infinity.” – Oscar Wilde from De Profundis (written while he was in prison).

I’m afraid that I can’t always find quotes to go well with images, so I throw in what sticks in my mind.  If I put that mind to the task, I can find a relationship between just about any image and a line of prose, but only because I want to.

To fall and die each season, only to be reborn in the spring.  We also shed our hair and sometimes our ideas.  Only the ideas return ad infinitum; if not through us, then through someone else.