Lido Sunflower

(Click to enlarge)

Another image from the archives, and another black and white as well. And surprise! It's another panorama. Unlike the previous pictures, though, this is a single-frame pano. Instead of stitching multiple pictures together, this method entails the use of a camera with a drop-in mask to block off the top and bottom vertical bands of the image right on the film plane, and with a corresponding mask in the viewfinder.

The Pentax ZX-5n had this feature, and was also the first autofocus camera I owned. I could shoot these pseudoramas and print them with a black border all around. This picture was made in August of 1999, along Lido Boulevard in Lido Beach.

Fulton Landing Panorama

(Click to enlarge)

Under the Brooklyn Bridge at the old ferry landing, on an overcast and damp day in April of 1986. Before the bridge opened in 1883 the only way to get from Fulton Street in Brooklyn to Fulton Street in New York was via the aptly named Fulton Ferry, which docked on this spot on the Brooklyn side.

Twenty-two years ago it was a somewhat shabby, out-of-the way locale with a killer view of lower Manhattan. Glancing at Google maps today it seems to have been cleaned and paved, and the benches removed. Still has the views, though, and judging from the white stretch limo and the figure in flowing white, popular for wedding pictures.

A panorama made from only two frames and shot with the Pentax ME Super through a 50mm lens, about all I had in those days...

Petrified Panorama

(Click to enlarge)

Another shot from the Route 66 trip, this panorama is also made from seven separate images. It looks larger than the previous one simply because it was made from vertical images, whereas the one below was made from horizontal pictures. Vertical pictures stitch together with less distortion, although I did have to clone a bit down in the lower corners in order to keep from cropping the orange log at the bottom in half.

Sherry and I created a blog during this trip; if you're interested you can read all about The Murphys: Arguing Across America.

Painted Panorama

(Click to enlarge)

Ninety-three thousand, five hundred and thirty-three acres of Arizona. It's a big desert, and I wouldn't want to paint it. Fortunately, that's been taken care of for us in this U. S. National Park Service facility inside the Petrified Forest National Park, itself neatly bisected by Interstate 40.

This panorama is composed of seven separate pictures stitched together in Photoshop, with a little smoothing done to the sky. Since we weren't there at the optimal time of early morning or late afternoon, I boosted the contrast and saturation a bit.

Missy the Pug

July 1990

Missy was a young pug who lived next door to me in Rosedale. She was a young pug, since she was the replacement for a previous dog, also a pug, and named Mister Pug. Each in turn were the companions of Tootsie, a longtime neighborhood fixture on 147 Drive, one of those ubiquitous little old ladies that you find on every block in Queens. She lived with Missy in a house where time had stood still since the mid sixties or seventies, painfully neat and orderly, all the upholstered furniture covered with plastic, and religious icons scattered about.

As a dog, Missy had but one trick, which she dutifully performs above. I'm not sure if all pugs can do this with their ears, but she could, and it was very odd to see.

The Queen B

Another shot from the Benny sessions in the summer of 1990. (My other favorite picture.) Here she presides over the room from the vantage of the dust lid on Sherry's turntable. She was still a bit leery of me at this point, but was getting more comfortable as time went by. I didn't use anything other than the room light for these; I'm not sure if I even owned a flash at the time. These were shot with a Pentax ME Super and, I think, a 50mm 1.7 lens on Ilford HP-5 film, 400 ISO.

Benny - June 1990

Benny, sweet Benny. This is from the second photo session I ever had with the little girl. She was a young and still lively ten or eleven years old back then, living with Sherry on Sixty-Ninth Street, 500 square feet in the sky. Who knew then that I was only a few years away from being around with her until the end?

Sherry wanted some nice pictures of her, and this was my favorite of the lot. There are three or four more from this and a later session in July of that year that I want to post here, just as soon as I fire up the scanner and see how well it gets along with my latest version of Photoshop®...

Benny is sitting on a bench in front of the piano, with the television news providing the light in the background. The embroidery on the bench is by Sherry's Aunt Molly, namesake of our current black cat. This embroidery is now stretched and framed, and hangs on our living room wall. Benny's ashes sit on the bookcase in a hollow ceramic cat sculpture we got in Mexico. I forget who has the piano...

West 4th Street - The Cage

In the summer of 2001 I did some freelance work for the Village Voice, about six assignments in all. I shot some restaurant reviews (people at tables, pictures of entrees, and once I had to figure out a way to shoot a mojito, which, as a drink, is nowhere near as interesting looking as a daiquiri or margarita, but I came home with something good. 'Good' meaning I got paid, and it was used. Though it would have looked better in color.)

I sat at the edge of the stage while Tom Harrell played trumpet at the Village Vanguard (but only for the first three numbers, no flash allowed), and I spent an afternoon within the confines of the Cage at West Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue, a well-known mecca for street basketball.

Benches in the Snow

Another scene from the Ottawa trip in December, these two benches overlook the Ottawa Locks of the Rideau Canal, where it meets the Ottawa River. With the canal being frozen in the winter, they don't use this area too much, and there aren't many precautions to prevent the unwary or careless-footed from slipping on the ice and snow right down to their broken-neck death from a railing-less walkway into the canal just steps from this fluffy postcard.

I like this shot for the repetition within the vanishing perspective, and the straight lines mingling with the curves.

Indian Spring

Warm, wet, windy, with wispy mists blowing across the dune grass and scrub pines. Not balmy-warm, warm with a chill: a chill that could be a harbinger of the imminent spring, or the chill reminder of a winter only begun. A steady, damp breeze from the breakers just over the dunes to the south, coating the boardwalk with atomized droplets.

January thaw, Indian Spring. Ten more weeks of winter.