Rocco Galatioto, nice photos and good food

The dignity of the subject is sacrosanct lest the whole enterprise becomes unethical. These three ladies were in a nursing home.

Yes indeed, this may be the best people picture I have ever taken. It was shot on a Ferragosto afternoon in Scopello, Sicily. This family was all dressed up for the occasion. Ferragosto is the fifteenth of August and is the feast of the assumption and a national holiday. I posed  them around a Vespa  scooter that belonged to one of the family members. The year was 1969 and the camera was the Canon FT/QL with the superb Canon 50 mm  F 1.4 FL lens. Naturally, the film was Tri-X. What is uncanny is the fact that all the children are now approaching mature age and the adults are old, to put it mildly. This is photography's unique ability to capture a moment in space-time and freeze it forever. It is really a powerful craft.

This is a shpt from a party for school children given by Catholic Charities, my client, at a school in Brooklyn a few years ago. The camera was the Nikon D2-X, if you need to know.

That is is you keep your eyes open and you camera  is ready. This shot dates from around 1984 when auto focus and auto anything were still in the future and i fought auto focus tooth and nail and still hate it. In those days we used so called hyper focus settings on our lenses using the depth of field scale and aligning your F stop to the infinity marker so that you had a great area in which all was in focus. more or less. I used my newly purchased used Nikon S-2 with a superb Nikkor 35mm F 3.5 and my trusted Tri-X. This person just happened to be running flipping arms and scarf like a bird. I just took the shot. One, that is. No motor drives or other tools that have made photography the realm of medicrities.

This photo is from a series of shots of a pottery program for youngsters. It was held at the Manhattan YMCA. I love the intensity of the young artist. The photo dates from 1969 and was shot on Tri-X with the Canon FT and the  Canon 50mm F1.4 FL lens.

This photo dates from 1972 and was shot om Mulberry Street in Manhattan's Little Italy. The camera was the Leica M-4 with the 50mm Summicron lens and naturally the film was Tri-X.Such displays were possible then. Now the Board of Health would prohibit this. Too bad we must live under this nanny state of mind.

Google has applied for a contact lens camera patent. Nobody is now safe nor is there any privacy left. Very serious business. If you are the kind of person who gets really pissed off and uncomfortable  at the thought of somebody recording you on Google Glass, the search engine company's latest patent application will probably make you feel even more pessimistic about the future. In January Google announced its smart contact lens project and now has filed a patent application for a micro camera module to be added to with the smart lenses.   We are seriously screwed. This is a departure from this post's avoidance of any political or ideological stances, other than in  the photographic ambit. of course,  but this is very serious as it will totally violate any residual privacy that is left. Not good news.

This shot is from a story I was covering for Migration Today magazine and it dealt with the wonderful Haitian artist community in Flatbush, Brooklyn. It was shot  on Tri-X with the 35mm Summicron on the Leica m-4. I love the entire composition. Using the 35mm, and getting close. one can photograph the environment in which the subject works.

And with summer come the nice local fruits and vegetables that can be bought at farmer stands.  

Digital photography is really too easy. This shot of the old station in Mystic, Conn shows how the lack of reciprocity failure in digital makes a photo like this possible wit h relative ease.    

My sweet and beautiful dog, Charlie

A trip to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is always a pleasant one but this time there were definite signs of spring. I used the soft focus filter in the Olympus EPL-2 to create a more romantic effect. Looks like that spring is finally here. Better late than never.