Fur Coat Weather (Fake/Real)

Been chilly in New York the past few days. Fifth Avenue is rife with fur coats - fake and real. Here's some shots.

And just because you can afford the real thing doesn't mean you'll be happy about it

House of Sages

A little more than three years ago, before I restarted my documentary work on the Lower East Side, I took a walk through the neighborhood. I happened to meet this rabbi standing outside the House of Sages on East Broadway. It's one of a number of small synagogues in the neighborhood that occupy one floor in a brownstone building. Many years ago there were many tiny synagogues that coexisted with the larger congregations of the Bialystoker, the Roumanian American, and the Chaim Sofer synagogues. The House of Sages was established as a place of retreat and study for aging/retired rabbis.

A few days ago I was in the neighborhood and happened to be at the House of Sages just before the daily late afternoon service began. This same rabbi was kind enough to allow me to come in a take a few photos before the service began.

Random Thoughts

Yesterday I went into New York City to attend the opening of a show at the Leica Gallery. Photographer Harvey Stein  has been documenting the people of New York for more than forty years. The two series showcased are his photographs of Coney Island that were the subject of his book aptly titled Coney Island, 40 Years, and his series of portraits taken in Harlem that are the subject of his most recent book Harlem Street Portraits. The exhibit will be on display until February 22. It's a testament to Harvey's commitment and dedication to documenting life in New York, and is well worth a visit.

Life comes in bunches, good and/or bad. Right now I'm enjoying a burst of the good. Currently I have a show of a series I shot twenty years ago that was focused on the last performing years of my first musical mentor, Bill Monroe, on display at Unique Photo in Fairfield, NJ.

This Sunday, January 12th, is the opening of a show at the Jewish Community Center of MetroWest called 'Judaism: A Visual Conversation' which is a group show in which I have twenty nine photographs that are part of my ongoing Manhattan Diaspora project. The show will be on display through February 23rd.

I was recently invited, along with two other photographers, to participate in a showcase event at B&H Photo in New York (THE preeminent photography store in New York) which will be presented on February 17th in their Event Space. I haven't yet made the selection of images I'll present, but a good portion of them will be selected from my Manhattan Diaspora series. A large portion of the initial set of images taken twenty years ago on the Lower East Side can be viewed on my website in the galleries by that name.

I shot this image yesterday evening while strolling on Broadway just before I went to the Leica Gallery to see Harvey's show. The Fuji X-Pro1 is a tool with which I feel completely in harmony and it's been a joy to use. It has never let me down, even on dark frigid New York winter nights.

2013 in Review

I've been preparing all my 2013 images for submission to the Copyright office. It's a good opportunity to review the work and pick up on any shots that I may have missed out on processing. I'm sure I'll find more if I ever go through them again, but for now here's a batch that I didn't do the first time around. There's no subject or theme to the post, just random stuff that I wanted to develop, each for its own particular reason.

Some Interesting Men ....

For the past few days I've been hard at work preparing all the photos I shot during the year of 2013 for submission to the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress through a website designed with the US government's fingerprints all over it. Very difficult to navigate, convoluted would be a kind way of describing it. So I took the day off on Saturday to take a walk across Canal Street and up through SoHo and on to Union Square. I met a few interesting men along the way:

By far the most interesting, and also the most cordial was this guy's version of the Jewish Defense League. Ain't nobody gonna mess with him!

Saturday On Madison Ave.

The weekend before Christmas and the streets were teeming with shoppers. Madison Avenue is a treat to walk and see all the high end folks out to pick up their last minute thousand dollar stocking stuffers. But there was a surprise too. I ran into Bruce Gilden, Magnum photographer, who has a show currently at Higher Pictures Gallery. He wasn't too happy that I got this shot of him, but it amused his wife.

Just a few more snaps of my walk on the Avenue.

Street Shot

It's been quite a few days since my last post. I've been taking a course at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City, and been totally consumed by preparing work for the next round of classes this weekend. More on that next week.

I needed a break from editing over 180 photographs down to 40 (I'm still not there, but making progress) for a class presentation. There's some images I'm just so in love with that I refuse to admit that they don't add anything important to the story. I need an independent eye to look over the series.

In January a series of my photographs taken on the Lower East Side will be part of a group show at the MetroWest JCC in West Orange, NJ. Here's the poster for that show:

On my one outing this past week I experimented with some settings on my camera. I've grown a bit lazy by using auto ISO, and settled for the average exposure of the camera meter. Wednesday was a bright sunny day and I wanted to take advantage of the strong contrast to get some images with the extreme highlights were brought within reasonable exposure range, so I underexposed all my images by a stop, and brought out the shadow detail in Lightroom and Silverexpress Pro 2. I wasn't really searching for meaningful images, but I liked one shot:

Once the class is finished I'll be back on the street again.