i wish i had a picture of that.
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Showing posts with label sigma 50 mm F1.4 ex dg hsm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sigma 50 mm F1.4 ex dg hsm. Show all posts
pretty city: madison square monday
shortly after i took these photos, as i waited to cross the street on the north side of the park, a black and white butterfly came to rest on my shoulder.
i wish i had a picture of that.
i wish i had a picture of that.
read a good poem: (see tudor city)
Late March
***
here is my saturday, in early march (i discovered tudor city)...
Saturday morning in late March.
I was alone and took a long walk,
though I also carried a book
of the Alone, which companioned me.
The day was clear, unnaturally clear,
like a freshly wiped pane of glass,
a window over the water,
and blue, preternaturally blue,
like the sky in a Magritte painting,
and cold, vividly cold, so that
you could clap your hands and remember
winter, which had left a few moments ago—
if you strained you could almost see it
disappearing over the hills in a black parka.
Spring was coming but hadn't arrived yet.
I walked on the edge of the park.
The wind whispered a secret to the trees,
which held their breath
and scarcely moved.
On the other side of the street,
the skyscrapers stood on tiptoe.
I walked down to the pier to watch
the launching of a passenger ship.
Ice had broken up on the river
and the water rippled smoothly in blue light.
The moon was a faint smudge
in the clouds, a brushstroke, an afterthought
in the vacant mind of the sky.
Seagulls materialized out of vapor
amidst the masts and flags.
Don't let our voices die on land,
they cawed, swooping down for fish
and then soaring back upwards.
The kiosks were opening
and couples moved slowly past them,
arm in arm, festive.
Children darted in and out of walkways,
which sprouted with vendors.
Voices greeted the air.
Kites and balloons. Handmade signs.
Voyages to unknown places.
The whole day had the drama of an expectation.
Down at the water, the queenly ship
started moving away from the pier.
Banners fluttered.
The passengers clustered at the rails on deck.
I stood with the people on shore and waved
goodbye to the travelers.
Some were jubilant;
others were broken-hearted.
I have always been both.
Suddenly, a great cry went up.
The ship set sail for the horizon
and rumbled into the future
but the cry persisted
and cut the air
like an iron bell ringing
in an empty church.
I looked around the pier
but everyone else was gone
and I was left alone
to peer into the ghostly distance.
I had no idea where that ship was going
but I felt lucky to see it off
and bereft when it disappeared.
--by Edward Hirsch via the poetry foundation
***
here is my saturday, in early march (i discovered tudor city)...
photos @ anita aguilar
the flower district, in winter
a visit on a summer morning to the flower district can be almost dizzying, with traffic and trucks slamming and bamming, loading and unloading flowers, from tiny potted posies nestled in shallow crates to long sturdy-stemmed sunflowers wrapped in brown kraft paper. grand tropical varieties mix with pretty, but unnameable, local ones. there are pink, yellow, red and green bouquets everywhere.
in the wintertime, the sights and sounds are more muted. a tray or two of tulips remind you that spring is on the way. but it's mostly buds and vines and branches, looking lonely, but still lovely.
cherry blossom buds
i think my sister would like these vines...
red ginger
tender pussy willows are everywhere...
i fell in love with this beautiful bunch. then realized they are fake.
yellow rununculus (right?)
branches and bamboo
in the wintertime, the sights and sounds are more muted. a tray or two of tulips remind you that spring is on the way. but it's mostly buds and vines and branches, looking lonely, but still lovely.
cherry blossom budsi think my sister would like these vines...
red ginger
tender pussy willows are everywhere...
i fell in love with this beautiful bunch. then realized they are fake.
yellow rununculus (right?)
branches and bamboo
all photos © anita aguilar
read a good poem: winter trees
bryant park, nyc. feb 19, 2010.photo © anita aguilar
ok--the last of the winter trees for this year. i promise.
***
Winter Trees
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
the "infra-ordinary"
i just got back from a quick trip to the ICP (pay what-you-wish-fridays, 5-8pm, is ideal for such a compact venue).
showing now: a solid, if familiar, assemblage of surrealist images of paris in the 1920s and 30s (man ray, brassaï...a personal favorite is andré kertész's rue vavin, paris 1925); a set of prints by eugène atget that offer a dreamy historical record of the city of lights; and a collection of miroslav tichý's photographs (crudely printed, mostly of women, taken surreptitiously). i can see why some consider the work "stalker-esque" and creepy...but i love the evocative blur in so many of them.
it was said that tichy's photographs exemplify the "infra-ordinary" -- french novelist georges perec's term for "that which passes when nothing passes. " perec wrote, in approaches to what?, "my intention is to describe what remains, that which we generally don't notice, which doesn't call attention to itself, which is of no importance, what happens when nothing happens, what passes when nothing passes, except time, people, cars and clouds."
agree or disagree with whether or not tichy achieves this, but i think it's a worthy challenge...
***
on my way home, i tried to practice "follow-focusing" with my 50mm. at night, this is quite a trick. so i wound up with a lot of mistakes including these--they have a kind of "tichy blur"?
i don't think i can get away with quite this much of it though. oh well.
42nd street/6th avenue, nyc.
wondering...does black & white help or hurt?
showing now: a solid, if familiar, assemblage of surrealist images of paris in the 1920s and 30s (man ray, brassaï...a personal favorite is andré kertész's rue vavin, paris 1925); a set of prints by eugène atget that offer a dreamy historical record of the city of lights; and a collection of miroslav tichý's photographs (crudely printed, mostly of women, taken surreptitiously). i can see why some consider the work "stalker-esque" and creepy...but i love the evocative blur in so many of them.
it was said that tichy's photographs exemplify the "infra-ordinary" -- french novelist georges perec's term for "that which passes when nothing passes. " perec wrote, in approaches to what?, "my intention is to describe what remains, that which we generally don't notice, which doesn't call attention to itself, which is of no importance, what happens when nothing happens, what passes when nothing passes, except time, people, cars and clouds."
agree or disagree with whether or not tichy achieves this, but i think it's a worthy challenge...
***
on my way home, i tried to practice "follow-focusing" with my 50mm. at night, this is quite a trick. so i wound up with a lot of mistakes including these--they have a kind of "tichy blur"?
i don't think i can get away with quite this much of it though. oh well.
42nd street/6th avenue, nyc.
wondering...does black & white help or hurt?read a good poem: the snow man
from the yard...
from the car...
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
--Wallace Stevens, via the poetry foundation
--Wallace Stevens, via the poetry foundation
photos © anita aguilar
we love a little 'wichcraft
my friend meg and i do.
i don't much like ham, except the way they slip a little smoky slice into this grilled cheddar deal, along with some
i don't much like ham, except the way they slip a little smoky slice into this grilled cheddar deal, along with some 
read a good poem: the secret
the secret? maybe not theirs, but someone's. pablo neruda, love sonnet xvii. (translation: stephen tapscott)
photo © anita aguilar
***
The Secret
Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
-by Denise Levertov, via the poetry foundation
***
(cheers to writers, readers, and a thousand more secrets)
read a good poem: the diner
11am at joseph leonard. nyc.The short-order cook and the dishwasher
argue the relative merits
of Rilke’s Elegies
against Eliot’s Four Quartets,
but the delivery man who brings eggs
suggests they have forgotten Les fleurs
du mal and Baudelaire. The waitress
carrying three plates and a coffeepot
can’t decide whom she loves more—
Rimbaud or Verlaine,
William Blake or William Wordsworth.
She refills the rabbi’s cup
(he’s reading Rumi),
asks what he thinks of Arthur Waley.
In the booth behind them, a fat woman
feeds a small white poodle in her lap,
with whom she shares her spoon.
“It’s Rexroth’s translations of the Japanese,”
she says, “that one can’t live without:
May those who are born after me
Never travel such roads of love.”
The revolving door proffers
a stranger in a long black coat,
lost in the madhouse poems of John Clare.
As he waits to be seated,
the woman who owns the place
hands him a menu
in which he finds several handwritten poems
by Hafiz, Gibran, and Rabindranath Tagore.
The lunch hour’s crowded—
the owner wonders
if the stranger might share
my table. As he sits,
I put a finger to my lips,
and with my eyes ask him
to listen with me
to the young boy and the young girl
two tables away
taking turns reading aloud
hot/curry
curry. (beef.) bayard street, nyc.
photo © anita aguilar
Take this curry, this fine-tuned
balance of humors, coconut liquor thinned
by broth, sour pulp of tamarind
cut through by salt, set off by fragrant
galangal, ginger, basil, cilantro, mint,
the warp and woof of texture, aubergines
that barely hold their shape, snap beans
heaped on jasmine, basmati rice
—it’s a lie, all of it—pretext—artifice
—ornament—sugar-coating—for . . .
***
read the full poem by craig arnold on slate...
balance of humors, coconut liquor thinned
by broth, sour pulp of tamarind
cut through by salt, set off by fragrant
galangal, ginger, basil, cilantro, mint,
the warp and woof of texture, aubergines
that barely hold their shape, snap beans
heaped on jasmine, basmati rice
—it’s a lie, all of it—pretext—artifice
—ornament—sugar-coating—for . . .
***
read the full poem by craig arnold on slate...
testing testing, the sigma 50mm on the CT set
ah, i remember this shoot day well. i'd just purchased the sigma 50mm and brought it to the set for the first time. these photos are vastly different from the others-- new lens in a new space (a loft in tribeca). i didn't know how to properly adjust for the light there, but still, i think these tinty pics are ok.
molly (in green) and renee.
i love molly...we met for the first time on the shoot, and we've run into each other a bunch of times in the city.
she is the lead singer of rooftops. i'm hoping to catch their next show...
molly, renee, lauren, and felicia.
lauren. miss lauren. i love her, too.
lauren and molly. different light here--it was night time by the time we shot this.
we set up spots to create an indoor "party" scene.
lauren and molly. this was their reaction when i told them i sort of stalked scott speedman. once.
(i just followed him for a few blocks in the street. ha.)
mike. guess what? love him!
random, mickey mouse/star wars doodad on someone's desk at the office. but it was the first shot i took that really showed off the nice "blur" that you can get with the 50mm.
molly (in green) and renee.i love molly...we met for the first time on the shoot, and we've run into each other a bunch of times in the city.
she is the lead singer of rooftops. i'm hoping to catch their next show...
molly, renee, lauren, and felicia.
lauren. miss lauren. i love her, too.
lauren and molly. different light here--it was night time by the time we shot this.we set up spots to create an indoor "party" scene.
lauren and molly. this was their reaction when i told them i sort of stalked scott speedman. once.(i just followed him for a few blocks in the street. ha.)
mike. guess what? love him!
random, mickey mouse/star wars doodad on someone's desk at the office. but it was the first shot i took that really showed off the nice "blur" that you can get with the 50mm.more chaos theory stills here, and the "peaches and herb" episode.
all photos © anita aguilar for phoebeworks productions/chaos theory
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