mattblaze

Tree mating season, with pollen in the air everywhere, is an especially precarious time to change lenses outdoors.

Some cameras have an auto vibrate function that shakes dust off the sensor when you power the camera on or off. My main camera doesn't have that, but I'd definitely enable it if it did.

Anyway, these habits are simple enough, and have saved me a lot of post-processing and sensor cleaning hassle.

The first is a HEPA-filter equipped blower bulb. I use the Orbit bulb, which I got from B&H for about $25. Any time the sensor is exposed or I change lenses, the last thing I do before closing up the camera is blow off every surface. It's become an automatic habit.

The second is a small, thin, waterproof ultralight picnic blanket/ground cloth, which I put down to give me a clean surface on which to set lenses, etc. Weighs almost nothing. I have the "Odoland" brand from Amazon, about $10.

Perhaps if I were better at photography I'd be able to take less blurry pictures.

This motion study was captured with a Zeiss 40mm lens on a Pentax 645Z camera and 10 stops of neutral density. The 13 second exposure was timed so the train was passing in front for roughly half the exposure. The regular corrugated surface of the commuter train worked well to allow the station building to retain detail while still clearly showing the train streaking by in front. A freight train (which passed by earlier) worked comparatively poorly for this.

The Washington Hilton, completed 1965, was designed by architect William Tabler. It's notable not only for its distinctive exterior, but also for the prominent events hosted there. The hotel is or has been home to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, the National Prayer Breakfast, the Shmoocon conference, and the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, among many other things.

It has extensive back-of-house facilities and security features to accommodate high profile VIPs.

The result here is about 170MP in 16x9 format, which is sufficient for very large prints that retain a great deal of detail (I've printed this at 6 feet wide).

Mid-Century Modernist architecture, and Brutalism in particular, is easy to dismiss as being superficially lifeless and uninteresting, but at its best (and with the right eye) these buildings can be seen as sculptures in the landscape. I don't always appreciate them, but they're often more interesting than they first seem.

This is a fairly conventional architectural composition, emphasizing the curved facade. To get a high resolution capture of the wide structure, this was made as a stitched composite of two captures with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens. The Phase One back was shifted left and right by about 12mm.

By using shift movements at a fixed perspective, the two captures can be stitched directly together into a panorama without needing to transform the frame geometry (as you would with panning).

@[email protected] It's beautiful, but in a very fussy, formal way. I've been in there a few times, and every time I was worried I'd accidentally break something, like I was surrounded by priceless, fragile antiques.

The 23mm lens I made this with, the widest sharp lens they make for this camera system (roughly the angle of view of a 16mm in 35mm terms), was recently in the shop for a few months, and I felt like one hand was tied behind my back. It's my go-to lens for so much.

(I can also fit a Canon 17mm shift lens with an adapter. Its full image circle just covers the 645 frame, but it's nowhere near as sharp as the 23mm Rodenstock, especially off center. The Rodenstock really spoiled me.)

Gramercy Park, which sits between Lexington Avenue and Irving Place between 20th and 21st Streets in Manhattan, is a locked private park. At the center of the park is a statute of Edwin Booth, a 19th century actor today best known for being the less murderous sibling of John Wilkes Booth.

Only residents of the surrounding buildings are issued keys. There are a lot of rules, including against photography, so this is as close as we get. If you have to ask, you don't belong. Go away.

Captured with Phase One XT IQ4-150 and the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR-Digraron, a sharp ultrawide angle that accommodated just enough shift movement to compose this frame. Captured from the now-shuttered Gramercy Park hotel, on a fittingly grey and joyless winter day.

The wide angle and high, single point perspective emphasize the dominance of the private, locked park's local footprint. Rather than creating public space, it seems to elbow us aside.