Nose In The Air

What a gaw-jus day in New York! Perfect temps and humidity, with a touch of a breeze in the air (just enough to blow the dust and grit around and mess with my contact lenses, grrrrrr). The beautiful people of the East Side were out in their summer finery -  Bendel, Bergdorf - gotta get more bling. Was able to grab some wonderful material for my latest compendium. Modesty and current summer fashion are not compatible, and thank God for that!

Got this shot while walking across 57th street, just outside the Prada shop.

....Wonder If She's Gotta Boyfriend .....

The Bluegrass Kids Academy at the Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival played a short set on Sunday afternoon. When I saw this young dude checking out the crowd for prospects it brought me right back to my early days on the stage with Bill Monroe. I did the same thing (but I was just a few years older).

Another Perfect Day In Paradise

It's been quite a spring so far in the New York area. Lots of rain, but some really perfect days. James Russell Lowell said it so perfectly:

'And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;'

To celebrate:

Yet to keep us humble:

The Incomparable Bobby Hicks

When I was at the Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival this past Sunday I shot a few hundred pictures of the Masters of Bluegrass Band, a disproportionate number of them were of fiddler Bobby Hicks. When I was a young cub learning how to play bluegrass fiddle, especially from recordings of Bill Monroe, Bobby was probably the single most influential fiddler to me. He made a series of recordings for Rounder Records with a group that billed itself as the Bluegrass Album Band - and those recordings are classics in the vernacular. I've met and spoken with him quite a number of times over the years when he was playing with Ricky Skaggs, but this past Sunday the meeting was special. I can't explain why, but it just felt different.

I really liked his expression in this shot, but passed it by because of all the extra stage paraphernalia - mikes, mike stands, and cables - that are anathema to concert photographers. But ..... then I upgraded to Lightroom 5 and SHAZAM, with the new healing tools the problem was solved. I could have done the photo surgery in Photoshop, but over the past year I've grown increasingly less inclined to use it for manipulating my images. Here's the original RAW image:

And here's the finished image after processing in Lightroom 5 and Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

Pretty damned impressive!!

Fuji 55-200 Sharp as a Razor

I waded through all the shots I took yesterday of the Masters of Bluegrass Band at the Wind Gap Bluegrass Festival. Since I'm at the beginning of the learning curve of using this lens there were some laughable goofs .... no, you're not going to see them. However, I'm blown away by the image quality when I shot at the long end of the zoom - full frame equivalent of 300mm.

I processed these images in Lightroom 5 and the Nik plugins for noise reduction and contrast management. I wanted to post the color versions before I convert them to b/w. Indeed, this lens is as sharp as a razor.

Bobby Hicks - fiddler exraordinaire. I cut my teeth on the fiddle listening to his amazing work with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys.

Del McCoury - the carrier of the 'bluegrass flame' after Monroe's passing. I first saw Del perform as a banjo player at my first live concert of Bill Monroe. It was at that performance that I fell in love with Bill's music.

Bobby Osborne - half of the brother duet, the Osborne Brothers. When I was learning my music I used to try to tune in radio station WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia to listen to the Saturday Night broadcasts of the Jamboree.

Jerry McCoury - Del's younger brother. When I was in college I would often drive down to Sunset Park in West Grove, Pennsylvania to see the big name bluegrass bands. I first met Jerry there in the pasture behind the performance stage where we would go to jam between shows. I hadn't seen Jerry for forty years until yesterday.

J.D. Crowe - I first heard J.D.'s banjo virtuosity on recordings of Jimmy Martin. He filled in on banjo for a show Monroe played outside Lexington, Kentucky during the first month I was working as a Blue Grass Boy.

Old European Face in New York

I walked the High Line on Saturday and as per my post yesterday, gave my new Fuji 55-200 zoom lens a workout. Today I continued the workout at a bluegrass festival, and although I still have a long way to go until I'm comfortable shooting with this lens, I was really impressed with it's ease of handling.

I'll be reworking several of the color shots that I posted yesterday - those were color jpg conversions of the raw data, with no further adjustments. When I dig into the image I can really get to appreciate just how crisp and clean is this lens. On some of the test images I deliberately chose very high contrast edges so as to examine for chromatic aberration, and there was a tiny bit. But as you can see in this photo, the image quality and clean definition make this shot pop.

Fujinon 55-200mm Zoom Lens Test Run

I don't usually talk about equipment stuff or technical settings on this blog, but today will be an exception. I'm off to a bluegrass festival on Sunday to meet up with some old friends from Nashville who will be performing. One of the reasons I splurged on the new Fujinon zoom lens is to be able to shoot concert and festival performances, so this is the first opportunity to put this puppy to the test in a real life situation. I spent the afternoon today in the Chelsea district an the High Line of Manhattan to test out various functions and settings, and to get comfortable with using the EVF. Most importantly to see how sharp the IQ is at the full zoom distance, and to see just how many stops the Optical Image Stabilization will buy for me. I've got a bit more learning to do with using the EVF and the image stabilization, but I'm really pleased with the results I got today. I examined all the images at 100% and was quite surprised to see that I can easily hand hold the camera at 1/60th second. In some cases down to 1/30th second, and in one example below even to 1/15th second (although in a real life situation I wouldn't go slower than 1/60th second).

All the images below were shot RAW and turned into jpegs in Lightroom with no other processing, so there's some noise in the images shot at faster shutter speeds. I'll be posting some of the individual shots in the next few days after I process them for noise and do my usual b/w conversions. First the individual shots:

ISO 500, 70.5mm, f5.6, 1/250 sec

ISO 1600, 200mm, f5.6, 1/250 sec

 ISO 1000, 200mm f5.6, 1/200 sec

ISO 1600, 200mm, f8, 1/500 sec

ISO 6400, 155mm, f8, 1/500 sec

For the following series I'll post only the shutter speed since these were shot with the intention of testing the OIS. The last image is blurred because I need more practice at being patient and waiting for the camera shutter to actually take the photo before I move on to the next shot:

 1/500s

1/250s

1/125s

1/60s

With this sequence the shutter speeds are the same as the previous:

There are five shots in this next sequence. The shutter speeds are as before with the addition of the last shot at 1/30s. A tiny bit of blurring at that speed:

The next sequence has six exposures. The last one was hand held at 1/15s. I was quite surprised at the results:

The last sequence of four shots is by far the best. The four shutter speeds as the first groups, and all quite acceptable.