Rocco Galatioto, nice photos and good food

Early morning dog walk. At 7:00 AM is still almost dark. These images show the result of flooding after a drenching rain. Nasty but my dog loves to walk and splash in it no matter how cold the water is.

Back in 1986, digital meant CD's. No one could even imagine digital photography. Film was king and we all believed that it would reign indefinitely. Well you know the rest of the story. These images were shot from Queens with a Nikon FTn with a 300mm lens on High Speed Ektachrome that by today's standards was not very fast. Naturally, I availed myself of a very sturdy tripod. Taking a picture was not easy in those days.

Four mega pixels would make you a laughing stock in these days of more and more resolution. Yet my old Minolta S 404 with only four mega pixels took great photos. Unfortunately that was long ago at digital's incipiency and Minolta became Konica Minolta that was taken over By Sony who will no longer support any Konica Minolta products. So this little gen cannot even be fixed because there are no spare parts. At any rate, I also moved on initially lured by larger numbers of mega pixels needed if an image had to be cropped. But I stopped at 20 megapixels in a Micro Four Thirds format that I find  very satisfying. I must confess that I mostly use my iPhone with "only" twelve mega pixels that I find very useful and satisfying. Go figure.

When it comes to film, it must be understood that from the moment it's manufactured onward there's a slow and ineluctable process of deterioration. This is slowest in black and white film that is properly washed. Kodachrome slides were able to hang on to their hues while Ektachrome slides were  unstable along with Agfachrome, Ferrania, GAF, etc. Here we have an example of two Ektachromes taken on the same day. The top one developed an annoying magenta color shift that I wasn't able to eliminate to my taste with Photoshop. I was able to kind of save the bottom one in color. Thanks to black and white conversion I was able to at least scan the image and preserve it. I kind of like the results. This is the South Street Seaport in the seventies when it was still in it's infancy, shot on a winter day.

I have posted this image before but it's worth re posting. Quebec Ville in June of 1973. Kodachrome II and a Nikon Ftn with a 35mm F 2.8 Nikkor lens. No words can describe hoe wonderful the old Kodachrome was. Almost magical. Although I love digital, when I see some of these slides I get very nostalgic for film.

When hurricane Sandy all but devastated Coney Island, the response was to rebuild and as a result a new, clean, modern and somewhat upscale place came to being. Some areas away from the boardwalk kept that old and rather rundown feel but the place is much improved. On a winter day one can see Coney Island at rest and it's fascinating.