Snowy morning

A light morning snow was falling in New York -- perfect for some late winter photos of Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge. I packed a Nikon D600 and two Nikon lenses, the 24-120mm and 70-200mm f/4. I kept the camera in Auto mode with an aperture of 5.6, but set the camera meter to read +1 stop in order to compensate for the white snow.

Early in the morning the city took on the appearance of an Impressionist landscape. By late morning the snow changed to rain and by evening the snow was gone.  All that is left of Nature's brief performance is in our memories and photographs.

The Bethesda Arcade near the fountain in Central Park

 

Bethesda fountain in Central Park

The Mall in Central Park

Gapstow Bridge on the Pond at Central Park

The Pond in Central Park with the city in the background

The Brooklyn Bridge and falling snow

City mist

Last night there was a slight rain/snow mix falling as I left the restaurant, and a light mist permeated the city. I headed over to Madison Square Park to check on one of my favorite New York views, the Empire State Building framed by the winter tree branches. I liked the way the bright light bled into the mist around the top of the building.

I had the Sony RX100 camera with me but no tripod. Even at ISO 1600 the shutter speed was only 1/8 second. To obtain the long vertical composition above I put the camera into its 16:9 crop mode. Bracing myself as best I could I took a number of consecutive shots in order to obtain one without motion blur.

I intentionally sought a blurred image in this abstraction of the city street to achieve a feeling of colorful nighttime excitement.

This image was assembled in Photoshop from the elements shown below.

The original studio photo of the model reaching towards the strobe light.  Her hand, already lightened by being closer to the light source, was further lightened in Adobe Bridge before bringing it in to Photoshop. A layer mask was created around the model to separate out the background.

This is a composite of four images. The first was a simple round white ball which was then used to create two more layers that were blurred to create a glow. The final image is a star burst to provide the streaks. This was added to the final image and its Photoshop layer changed to "screen", which eliminated the black.

A sky photo provided the background to which a vignette was added below.

Here are two variations of the model applying similar techniques:

Park Avenue just after sunset.  I wanted to intensify the colors to bring out the excitement of night time in New York.  A shutter speed of 3 seconds allowed the lights of the passing traffic to create colorful streaks of light. I also used a car parked on the right to reflect the lights and further amplify the colors. The camera was a Nikon D600 with a 24-70mm zoom lens.

The model was photographed on a gray background with studio strobe lighting and the tech parts were added later in Photoshop.  I keep many of these design elements around just for this purpose.

Legends: Nikon FTn camera

Nikon's first SLR camera, the Nikon F, was first introduced in 1959. It had an interchangeable viewfinder that allowed the camera to grow through several variations of metered Photomic T finders known as "photomic pentaprisms" beginning in 1962. The first was nothing more than a built-in meter with a photo cell that could be opened to read light.  The light was not read through the lens with this meter. Subsequent models, culminating in the FTn introduced in 1968 and featured in the photos shown here, were able to read light directly through the lens. The meter was a 60/40 type, meaning it delivered an exposure based upon 60% of the light from the center circle of the viewing screen plus 40% of the light from the rest of the screen.

The camera was known for its durability and a special model was outfitted for NASA to record early space missions including the Apollo moon landing.. The Nikon F was a very modular system accepting special 250 load backs, viewfinders for various applications, a motor drive, and a complete line on lenses from a super-wide 21mm to 1000mm telephoto. In the studio we were able to mount a polaroid back on the rear of the camera to test exposures.

The Nikon F and FTn were the first professional SLR cameras I used. The one above is shown with my press pass to an early space shuttle mission.

An inconvenient feature of this early camera model was that the entire back had to be removed to load film. I was always trying to stuff this back into one of my pockets so I could have two hands free to change the film.

A Nikon FTn shown here with the back removed to load film, in this case Kodachrome II which had an ASA (ISO) of 25 -- not exactly a speed demon.

The pentaprism viewfinder was removable so the camera could change focusing screen and accept a variety of other finder types. The Nikon F above is shown with its standard finder and a right angle magnifier.

The lens aperture coupled with the camera meter by connecting to a pin beneath the front of the meter. By ratcheting the diaphragm back and forth to its extreme apertures, the meter was set to know the most open aperture of the lens and thus was able to compute the other apertures as the ring turned.

This top end of the meter prism housing shows the on/off button towards the front, a widow that showed a meter needle to indicate the correct exposure, and an ASA (early name for ISO) setting ring. There was also a centering exposure needle inside so the photographer did not have to remove an eye from the viewfinder. The lever on the front left was pressed to remove the pentaprism housing from the camera.

The Nikon FTn was a state of the art professional camera in the 1960's until it was replaced by the Nikon F2 in 1973.

Two photos of the Brazilian Baroque town of Ouro Preto taken in the late 1960's with my Nikon F camera.

Medical Themes

Some recent visits to a hospital and medical facility inspired me to create some medical themed images.  Here are a few still life shots I did from a session yesterday.

All images were shot on a Nikon D600 and 105mm macro lens.  A single tungsten spot light aimed at a white wall provided the lighting for the image above.

I put a red gel on a tungsten light to add an "emergency" feel to some of the photos.

A mix of soft window light along with the red tungsten from the side is all that illuminated the photo above.