Category: Photo of the Week

Freak Photo of the Week

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Coney Island has opened its doors for another year! Astroland and Deno’s Wonder Wheel Parks are officially open on Weekends until June 8th and then everyday starting June 15th – September 3rd. I kicked off my vacation last week with a little night shoot with some friends down at Coney Island, where there seemed to be more dogs then humans at around 11pm on a Thursday night…
In other news:
I’ll be celebrating World Wide Pinhole Day at Coney Island this Sunday the 27th! If anyone wants to join in some pinhole fun come meet us at 2pm at Nathan’s Hot Dog Stand. We will be the ones with the boxes and tripods.
Seizing the Moments of Time: The Art of Long Exposures is a class I will be teaching at the
B&H Events Space on Wednesday May 14th. The talk will focus on the vision and creativity of Pinhole and Night photography.
Hope to see you somewhere along the road…

The return of the Photo of the Week

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What a long strange trip it has been! Well since my last blog on March 9th I have been traveling like a madman! Austin for SXSW, Vegas, Orlando, back to Orlando, St. Augustine, Salt Lake City, and today I’m off to Indianapolis! In between I have been at home with Nancy for 5 days… though one of those trips to Orlando was a real vacation with Nancy and her family where we truly relaxed and squeezed a lot of OJ. Somewhere in the midst of all this traveling I turned 37 and I believe I was a mile high in the air for that day!
I have definitely had some amazing adventures and good times along the way and I’m sure that you will see the images real soon. The good news is that starting Friday I will be on vacation in Brooklyn for 10 days! I travel so much that I like to spend the B&H holidays at home catching up with family and friends, and that is exactly my plan!
I also wanted to bring back the Photo of the Week aspect to the blog! I had neglected this for most of 2008, but I am now back on track! Pictured here is an amazing surreal sunset in the St Augustine salt marshes. My coworker Mike Murray and I were waiting to eat at Salt Water Cowboy’s when I noticed that their outdoor lamps were a similar color temperature as the sunset. The rule of always having a camera with you played out here as I embraced the juxtaposition of the artificial and natural light. It also ended up being one of the strangest dinners that I have ever had as we ate outside on their deck, which several cats made their home. Looking over the railing and below us the marshes were filled with oyster shells that customer had hucked over as well as many more cats and a very eager racoon. Thank goodness we didn’t have an extra seat or I think the racoon would have joined us!
Enjoy!

Reason #10,389 Why you should always have a camera with you

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beer delivery guyWorking for B&H I often get asked what is the best camera out there.

My reply is often: The one that is in your hand.

A camera can shoot 10 frames per second and have the highest megapixels out in the market, but if it is in your bag at home, or on your shelf, chances are you are missing some great shots. I recently received my point and shoot digital camera (the only digital camera that I own) back from repairs and it is great to have my always attached to my hip Ricoh GRd back in action. I took this photo of the week last week during the 10 minutes that I went outside my office for lunch.

In other Gabe news:

Nancy and I are preparing for our Tuscan Vacation. We fly to Rome tonight and take the train up to meet our good friends David, Barbara, and Mamina in Cortona, Tuscany. They invited us a year ago to stay with them in their Farmhouse and take lots of pictures and eat real Italian food. David and I have come up with a photo theme and plan on a lot of Night Photography as well as early morning photo shoots. I anticipate several siestas under the Tuscan Sun. Nancy and I previously visited Italy and Tuscany in 1997 and a 54 image show came out of that trip…so the expectations are high!

Here are two pictures I plan on expounding upon while on the trip:

abandoned farmhouse, tuscany monster gardens

And if you want to really make fun of me, here is my gear list for the trip:

Mamiya 7 with 65mm lens – This will be my main camera and I will be shooting with TriX film as well as the recently rereleased Ilford SFX infrared film.

Widelux F7 – This is a small panoramic camera. Who can resist panoramas?

Zero Image 4×5 pinhole camera – Rumor has it that I like to shoot pinhole cameras. This camera hasn’t got a lot of use lately and I’m ready to show it the large format love.

Nikon F3 with 70-210 lens – Okay, this might be overkill but this is the only telephoto lens I have and I have a feeling I’ll be wanting to zoom into some Tuscan villas from the distance.

Believe it or not, all this gear fits into one bag. I don’t plan on bringing all these cameras with me all the time. I just want options.

And let’s not forget that little Ricoh camera that never leaves my hip!

It is highly unlikely that I will be posting any updates on the website while in Tuscany. But we will be back on August 27th with plenty of stories and images!

Ciao for now!

Electric Photo of the Week (Aug 5-11)

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maine lighting stormNancy and I took a mini-vacation to Maine, where we met my Mom and stepfather, and explored Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Flying into Portland we hopped in our car and drove 3 hours in a torrential downpour. Things finally cleared up on our arrival into Bar Harbor, however, the above lightening show was still on view from our hotel balcony. How do you shoot a lightening storm? I really had never tried before and this one was a beauty that really lit up the sky and bay. My first guess was to expose it for as long as I could with the Ricoh GRD point and shoot digital camera and see the results. This gem of a camera can expose for a maximum of 3 minutes. I wanted to get some depth of field so I set the aperture for f/5.6 and attached the camera on my ever-present gorrillapod tripod and let ‘er rip! It looked pretty good, so I then switched the camera to RAW mode (one of the few P&S cameras that let’s you shoot in RAW) and bumped up the aperture to f/6.3. And Viola! The first truly electric photo of the week!