Thanks For Our Blessings .....

The winter chill has finally set in ......

Orchard Street Movie Set

Last week while scouting the Lower East Side, home of my latest long term photo project, for interesting material I happened upon a movie being filmed on Orchard Street. The scene was set in the middle to late 19th century - evidenced by the actors' costumes, horses, and pushcarts - and there were hundreds of characters waiting for the scene takes to begin. I couldn't resist the opportunity.

What struck me most was the incongruity of characters in costume who were texting or checking emails on their smart phones.

Rabbis

In my previous blogpost I included a few images I took while attending a bris on the Lower East Side. In attendance at the bris were quite a few rabbis from the local community, among whom were Rabbi David Feinstein - World renown talmud scholar:

Rabbis Ari, Gersten, and Shmuel Spiegel - the sons of Rabbi Jacob Spiegel who was so helpful to me in creating the original project on the Lower East Side: 

Rabbi Shmuel Spiegel has been assisting me in currently taking the project forward:

Rabbis Shmuel and Gersten Spiegel with Rabbi David Feinstein:

Bris

I had the great pleasure this past Sunday to be invited to Congregation Chasam Sofer, a historic synagogue on Manhattan's Lower East Side, to photograph a joyous celebration in the Jewish tradition, an orthodox ritual male circumcision - a bris. It is the rite of passage that Jewish male infants endure to signify Abraham's covenant with G-d. In this particular instance the celebration was doubly joyous because the initiates were twins. It was attended by over 200 men and their families, including Rabbi David Feinstein who is considered to be the most highly respected scholar of the book of Jewish law - the Talmud. More on that in the next post, but here's some images from the ceremony:

Inspired Eye

I'm proud to be recognized by the this Inspired Eye blog post. Rather than post images today, I encourage you to read that blog post and see the images posted there.

NYC Halloween Parade III

I'm going to try mightily to get back to my major effort on the Lower East Side this coming week. I've been distracted the past couple of weeks with trivial stuff like a tooth problem, and then came Halloween. I miss the intensity of documentary work.

I will be having a show of work that opens on Friday at Unique Photo in Fairfield, NJ. It's the collection of Bill Monroe images, extracted from I Hear A Voice Calling, that was on display at the International Bluegrass Music Museum in Ownesboro, KY for the year long centennial celebration of Monroe's birthday.

Here's a couple more shots from the Halloween Parade (heavily processed in Nik Color Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro):

NYC Halloween Parade II

In spite of the lack of costumes that were political and/or topical statements, there were many that were just plain fun to photograph. That, coupled with the opportunity to try out the new Analog Efex Pro plugin which was recently released as a free upgrade to the Nik suite of plugins, offered me the opportunity to break out of my usual b/w comfort zone and play a bit. Maybe a little too much .....