Enjoy your Saturday

Have a beautiful weekend

Manhattan in the seventies

Here are a few more shots of the area near my old studio. Some had to be converted to black amd white because of color saturation problems.  This area around the twenties and Lexington Avenue has also undergone a great transformation. There are no more cheap places to eat, foe example. It has assumed a very artificial look. I must go and photograph it again in the near future.

Before gentrification

The word gentrification, recently coined, has many negative and positive connotations. I will not get into polemics because this is outside the scope of this blog. Needless to say, many neighborhoods have been transformed. These images from the eighties show areas of Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy show the conditions of these areas before they were rebuilt. I am only interested in the images.

I love this bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge has to be the principal attraction in New York City. It is the place that most people around the world associate with this wonderful city. I cannot ever stop photographing it.

Archival scans, Central Park

These Ektachrome 100 scans were shot at the boat house in Central park in 1974. The camera was a Leica M-4 with a Tele Elmar 90mm F 2.8 lens  and developed the film using Unicolor chemicals. I vividly remember this Sunday afternoon in the end of February as if it were just yesterday.

How I miss my old Kodachromes

Scan we must if we want to safeguard the images that this extraordinary film ws able to render. The news that this film may be re introduced has proven to be chimerical. It was probably a trial balloon. This photo dates from 1975 and was shot at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden using a Nikon FTn with the 55mm f 3.5 Micro Nikkor lens; a true masterpiece of lens design. I just love this image.

A camera in a baseball hat? Leave it to Google

Google introduces the hat camera. Go figure.

Google was recently granted a patent it filed in 2013 that details a hat with a built-in camera system able to pair with a mobile device for the purpose of ‘interactive sessions.’ While a baseball cap in particular seems like a somewhat odd choice for a wearable, the system itself sounds fairly straight-forward as a portable studio of sorts for live broadcasting video and  photos.

The system revolves around the camera, but includes related technologies to encompass a complete system. This system includes a speaker that transmits audio to the user via bone conduction, a module that uses vibrations to direct the user's attention from one side to another, and a microphone, as well as a built-in battery to power it all.

The intended purpose for the wearable camera system appears multifaceted. One obvious purpose is capturing content and sharing it via the mobile app whether directly or as a live broadcast. The patent indicates the system could also be used for more utilitarian things as well, though, such as getting help from a remote entity (a line worker sharing a problem with someone at a facility, for example).

Whether this patent will ever be turned into a consumer product -- and whether that product would actually be based around a baseball cap -- is unclear at this time.

 

Have a lovely wee. Think of spring.

iPhone image

Have a quiet Sunday

iPhone image