Just another day spent mostly outside. No special cameras. Nothing to review. But I did buy something yesterday and it's supposed to be here in time for Saturday's video project.

I woke up. I drank water. I ate a handful of raw almonds and washed them down with a cup of coffee. I drove to the pool and used the heated steering wheel function in my car for the first time. It was pleasant. The walk from the locker rooms to the outside pool was quite chilly. The ambient temp at 7:59 was 28°f. No time for chit chat poolside. We were diligent. We swam a couple of miles under the mindful supervision of coach Jen. She likes to keep the swimmers moving. After the swim I had a breakfast of egg whites and kale. And black bread toast. And more coffee. Not a moment of my cuisine was time limited or calibrated like a fine Swiss watch. And it was all delicious.

I grabbed a camera off the end of the dining room table where it mysteriously ended up yesterday evening. It was the Leica M-E (typ240) and it was wearing a 50mm Planar ZM lens. I bundled up in a light down jacket, my favorite SmartWool hat and even traded the Birkenstocks for some sturdy leather shoes and thick socks. Then I went to Whole Foods for lunch. The flagship store has a wonderfully diverse hot food bar. I dived in and "curated" a fun lunch for a cold day. 

Chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, green beans with carrots and red peppers, and some broccoli for good measure. A pleasant young woman sat at the table next to mine and, seeing my little camera asked if I was a photographer. I was able to answer "yes." She asked what kind of photographer and I told her I mostly photograph advertising for corporate clients. She smiled and went back to scrawling on the screen of her jumbo iPad with some sort of stylus. A new way of working outside the trad. office.

After finishing lunch I headed out for a walk though familiar territory. Sometimes I think it's silly to spend time walking variations of the same route on many days. But then I remember that most people go through their lives with real jobs. Jobs that require them to spend seven or eight hours every day, five days a week, fifty weeks out of each year, at a desk firmly anchored in the same spot under the same lights surrounded by mostly the same people and no one thinks to question that choice. Thinking about that makes my choices seem more comfortable to me. At the very least I can spend a lot more time practicing my distant vision and breathing mostly fresh air. And the options for coffee are also extensive and varied. And I don't spend time next to a cadre of annoying co-workers or employees. 

Today's route was a familiar three mile circuit. Nothing stood out as visually exemplary but I was paying more attention to the winter light. It's different. More angular. Bluer. More clinical on sunny winter days. I tried to capture that feeling in the images I took. I'll spare you the usual mannequin content. I felt as though the window dressers let me down today... for the most part. 

What lens did I buy? The one I'm waiting for? That would be the second generation Leica 135mm f2.8 R series lens. I'll use it with a Novoflex R to L adapter that a friend handed me. It's supposed to be very precisely machined... I owned the original V1 of the Leica 135mm f2.8 R lens many years ago; back when I was shooting with several R series bodies. Like the R5 and the R8. The lens worked well for me back then and the V2 is supposed to have a reworked optical construction. I bought this new (to me) copy from the Leica Store Miami. I like to buy Leica stuff from them because it arrives on time and in better shape than I expect each time. This particular lens was just cleaned, lubed and adjusted by a Leica technician and comes with a warranty. It wasn't particularly expensive because I waited to buy it until after the new year when the store dropped prices on used gear that was still sitting around. 

I don't expect this lens to knock me over with amazing optical performance but I do remember it being a very good performer when stopped down one stop. Even wide open the center of the frame is credible. I bought it because I have always liked the focal length and have divested all my longer zooms so I felt I needed, at least, to have that focal length covered to isolate subjects and also, at an upcoming banker's conference in Santa Fe, it will come in handy for photographs of speakers on stage or crouching behind a podium. For those applications its performance will be quite satisfactory. I wish Leica, Panasonic or Sigma would make a nice, compact single focal length 135mm f2.8 as an addition to all the various zooms on offer. But maybe that's just because it's how I got acculturated back in the film days. Back before zoom lenses were very good. My total outlay for this lens was a whopping $425. Not a wild amount. Not enough to raise the anti-veblen hackles of even the most parsimonious of blogger...

So, I did what I do every day. I exercised. I wrote stuff and I took photographs. With intention. The intention to be outside and immersed in the world. The photos I liked are below.

I take a stab at urban landscape photography. It's vague and pointless.

Henry White is certain to make fun of me for including this.

looking down at the plant beds at the power plant. No rearrangements were done. 

wouldn't want to trigger A.I. paranoia...

We'll have four or five nights where the outside temperatures will drop 

under 32°. All the businesses in downtown; well, the ones with outdoor plants,

we're busy yesterday and today covering the shrubbery with plastic. 

It made for odd decor.

Loving the sunstar from the Carl Zeiss 50mm Planar. 

It's pretty nice at f8.0.

the logo on the front building reads: HyperGiant. I am mystified. But I was too lazy to go out of my way to find out more. Maybe I can find the entity on the web...

Medici Coffee on Congress Ave. has an outside seating area. This quote is the decoration 

on one of the short walls...

This light looks like "winter" light to me. And the clouds look like winter clouds.

Maybe I'm reading in too much since I was also shivering at the time.

Next winter adventure item? Gloves.

New construction everywhere I looked.

My nod to Stephen Shore. Not one of Henry White's faves...

This one's going to have 57 stories. It's smack in the middle of downtown. 

I'm not comfortable with extreme heights. You'll never see me hanging out 

at the top of one of these cranes. Not in the cards... we'll send that job to Joe McNally.

This is a high tech device that will strip the Bayer filters right off your sensor in one go. 

I've heard Leica uses one of these to convert Q3 cameras to Q3M cameras. 

Or maybe it's for natural gas distribution. I'm just a photographer. 

How would I know? 

Off to find a scrumptious dinner with friends. 

More swimming, eating and photography tomorrow. For sure.

No revisions were wasted on this short blog post.