The South Street Seaport in Manhattan in the early nineties. Like anything in NY it attracted and still does huge crowds.

 Way back when I had a photo studio on 26Th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. I was fooling around with my Burke And James 4X5 view camera. I wonder how many mega pixels this shot had. 

 Another interpretation of nature in black and white. I think it works. 

 I can never get enough of this amazing building. This 1974 shot was made with a Nikon F and the superb 105mm F 2.5 Nikkor lens. The Tri-X was developed in D-76 full strenght.ne of my favorites image  

 Another blast from the past. Shot in May of 1972 with  a Nikon FTn and the fabulous 105 F2.5 Nikkor lens. Naturally, the film was Tri-X.

 Shot under the Manhattan Bridge in Manhattan's Chinatown. A shoemaker and his costumers. I was usig a Nikon S @ rangefinder with a Nikkor 35 mm F 3.5 and naturally, the film was Tri-X.

 Another shot of cousin Grace from Washington DC A real character. Shot with my first Leica, an M4 with the 50mm Summicron F 2. Naturally, the film was Tri-X.

     Shot way back June 1970, on State Street in Brookyn. The children were looking out of a ground floor window in an old tenement on a hot day. The film was Kodak Tri-X and the camera was a Canon FT with the wonderful Canon 58 mm F 1:4 FL lens.

     Sometimes black and white is called for. This idyllic autumnal image was shot on Kodak Tri-X Pro, 120 format on my Rolleiflex. The venue is Hawley, Pennsylvania.

Another vintage shot. Washington Square Park in Manhattan, June 1969. Shot with a Canon FT and the Canon 50mm F 1.4 FL lens. Naturally the film was Tri-X.

 

 

       Some street photography from the seventies.This was a First Communion child photographed at Rockefeller Center, She had come out of Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Shot with my Leica M-4 and the 35mm F 2 Summicron loaded with Tri-X,  

 

    COUSIN GRACE. This wonderful woman was my father in law's cousin who lived in Washington DC or as she called it, the District. I shot this image with my first Leics, the M-4 and the Summicron 50 mm F 2 loaded with good old Tri-X. I just love this image and the look on her face. A real character.

Solitude

Photography is able to capture all sorts of moods. One has to be ready. These two images show loneliness and solitude. Images of this sort are much stronger in black and white. Both shot with a Leica M2 with Summicron lenses and, naturally, Tri-X Pan. They go back quite a number of years.

Central Park, Manhattan, NYC

Quebec City, Canada

Low res scans

Followers of this blog know my position on this ever increasing mega pixel race and this whole techie trend toward greater definition. If I need this, I use my eyes. In specialized situations high definition is useful but here are  philosophical problems with this trend.
If one is to subscribe to the rather tenuous notion that photography is an art, then the HD model will surely put this matter to rest making photography just a tool and a craft. To be an art, one must interpret and instead of faithfully recreate a scene  and one must emphasize and compose. I call this decomposition because one starts with a scene as a given and them must remove items as to emphasize certain points while de emphasizing others. This ideal runs contrary to pixel peepers and counters who are always  tempted to buy the latest camera model unaware that the rest of the world is getting by with smart phones that are making everyone a photographer. It's just too easy. The big cameras are usually show off items but this is of course another matter all together.
The images here are all scans from medium format Tri-X Pan. In order to give them a more "artistic" feel. I used a cheap, low quality scanner. What results are more interesting images that are not naturalistic but graphic. This is after all what photography really should be. I have had arguments about this point of view on numerous occasions in photography sites and the replies are at times sanguine. Many just want their cameras to recreate as faithfully as the state of the art applies. One could argue that you first shoot with the greatest resolution and then lower it, The problem is that this usually doesn't work and it defeats the entire purpose because the mind set is such that HD will always come first. What can I do? I can only state my position. You be the judges. I do like theseresults and I hope many of you like them too.