travel
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Rushing to Meet the Blue Hour
Before….. And after….. I tried shooting these as JPG files and they just didn’t have the same density, gradations and flexibility as the RAW files. So I used RAW for the editing, having shot the scenes in both JPG and RAW. Images taken with Sigma Bf and Sigma 35mm F2.0 DG DN lens. Location: Waterfront…
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An Elegant Lazy River
The pavilions within Grace Farms River Building, beautifully nest themselves under the roof of this sensitively designed and inhabited sculpture that flows across the landscape of New Canaan, CT. The building, designed by SANAA, is an elegant exploration of building siting and design. Its shape is sensitive to sunlight and shade, its interiors and exteriors…
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Good Intentions
I have already posted about Tim Carpenter’s (author, photographer, philosopher) book “To Learn to Photograph is to Learn to Die” but I continue to revisit this book and share ideas about it with the hobbyist photographer. Essential to Carpenter’s argument, that photography can prepare the photographer for death, is the act of “decreation.” In a…
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The mental stumbling block. The creative impasse.
Down By the Hudson, 2026 Sigma BF Monochrome Mode, Sigma 35 DG DN, edited Under the Bridge, Kingston, NY 2026 Sigma Bf, Panasonic 85mm Years ago, while in college and trying to design a high rise building (or was that the redevelopment project along the Monongahela?) I was given great advice by a professor: Stefanie…
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Radiators
Once a main form of energy transfer between steam and air (convection and infrared), the simplicity of the radiator (originally called a “hot box” by the inventor) was, at one time, embellished to be something of an art form (and create more surface area for effectiveness). For those exposed in the grand Victorian home, the…
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Ocean Grove
Ocean Grove is a community in Neptune, New Jersey originally formed in the mid-late 1800s by Methodist ministers as a religious retreat location for parishioners…or as they called it then…a camp meeting community. It is the one of the longest active communities of its type in the United States. What is a “camp meeting community,”…
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Color Me Impressed
Two streams of conscience at once. Can there be such a thing? Reading some notes I made in Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, one note from the margin stands out in particular, “the onslaught of photos is creating a world of indifference rather than reacting to it – thereby preventing the photographer to escape it…
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The Risky Advance
About 30 years ago, while a frigid cold winter was invading the New York Metro area, I was expressing my disgust with my grandfather about the weather when he turned around and said “the Hudson River is beginning to freeze over with solid ice.” “What?” I asked incredulously. He responded in his diphtheria afflicted voice,…
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Building Bridges
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”- Rita Mae Brown Recently I have been culling through old photos and came to the conclusion that my photography, and its subjects, hasn’t dramatically changed in the past 10 years. It’s as if I am a mad man,…
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Architectural Vulnerability
by James V October 24, 2020 Urban architecture has always fascinated me. From when I was eight years old, I dreamed of designing a high rise. I still do and the ideas for one continuously gestate in my mind. I wanted green terraces in the late 1980’s, floating in the middle of a skyscraper. Actually,…
