Pasta con aglio, olio e peperoncino. Buon appetito.

It doesn't get any simpler than this and perhaps more delicious and healthful. This was prepared in Sicily with the freshest ingredients.

BTW, Happy Saint Patrick's Day

A spring day back in 2003 / Olympus E-20

It seems as if it were merely last year that I had my Olympus E-20. It was a replacement for my E-10. I never used them on jobs but they were great cameras. The place is the Queens Botanical garden on a sunny early spring day.

The camellias are almost here; rejoice!

Buon appetito

Sooner or later it comes to food. I can't help it. If it's important, the camera was the Canon 5-D with the 24-105 F 4 L lens. Hand held.

My beloved Castellammare in early spring

Buon appetito

A tilt-shift lens for the rest of us?

Tilt-shift lenses from Canon and Nikon are very expensive and unless one does architectural photography exclusively their price usually doesn't justify owning one. This makes these lenses a niche product of limited distribution with the concomitant need to keep prices high. A vicious circle. There's now this lens that if optically decent, may solve this problem foe many of us.

 Rokinon’s Newest T-S 24mm F3.5, announced by Elite Brands.

 

Rokinon has announced the release of its 24mm F3.5 Tilt-Shift lens in May, 2013. The Rokinon T-S 24mm is a wide-angle, full-frame lens that has tilt shift movements, facilitating dvanced control over perspective and depth of field.  It will be available for Canon, Nikon and Sony Alpha mounts to start. More could follow.
A micro three thirds would also be nice in view of the format's popularity.
This lens'  flexibility and a unique optical cesign, makes it ideal for shooting architecture and landscapes. The T-S 24mm F3.5 lens can allow up to a 12mm shift with a 8.5 degree tilt. Relative to the lens mount, this 24mm can be shifted up to 90 degrees, granting a broad tilt to meet the photographer's creative needs.
This manual focus 24mm lens features a fixed focal length with an aperture range of f/3.5-22. This lens is suitable primarily for full-frame cameras but will work just as well with an APS-C crop sensor.  Construction is solid but complex, as it envolves 16 optical elements in 11 groups with 2 aspherical lenses.

Ultimately it's all about the food.

There's no place on earth where food is venerated more than in Italy. Eating well is almost a national obsession. It's a country where one has to try very hard to have a bad meal. It's not a class phenpmenon as in other countries where there's a high or low cuisine, here it's all great cuisine. La buona tavola is for everybody. These shots from  vegetable stands in  Venice sort of make the point. The vegetables are all of the highest quality and freshness. Nothing less will be tolerated.

 

Enjoy

Coney Island, archival photos

Coney Island used to be called the "playground of the world" when the world was much less sophisticated. Nevertheless, it always had a great fascination for me especially off season. These are scans from slides shot in the seventies.

Enjoy

Winter is beginning to end

Here in North Eastern Pennsylvania, winter's grip is finally beginning to ebb and it's about time.
.All shot with the Olympus E PL-2 and the kit lens.

Venetian crowds

The main streets in Venice are always crowded with tourists although just stepping away from them finds one in almost desolate alleys. This is because very few people actually live in Venice. Most are tourists.