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Just got a captcha "Select all images with a bus" and one of the panels shows an ambulance. Now I'm paralyzed with indecision.

Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, NYC, 2013.

All the pixels, but nowhere near the city of the same name in Maryland, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/10374715704

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US Embassy Building, Wandsworth, London, UK, 2025.

All the pixels, each unsure of which side of the road on which to drive, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54586230547

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Train in Blizzard, Philadelphia, PA, 2010.

All the pixels, bundled up for the cold, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4347814086

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Just learned that the great Tom Stoppard, author of many of my favorite plays, has died.

I met him once, when I found myself sitting next to him in the audience at the Donmar Warehouse. I was so starstruck that all I could manage to say at the interval was “You’re Tom Stoppard?! Wow.” Which, while strictly true, was probably not news to him.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. Remember: check if the town dump is open before you head over there with your VW microbus full of trash, or be prepared to write a song about it later.

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).

Washington ("Hinckley") Hilton, Washington, DC, 2023.

All the pixels, breakfast and fitness center included, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53007102796

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Also, one of the National Park "free days" (now for citizens only) is Trump's birthday (also Flag Day, but now re-branded).

Very DPRK.

FFS. For the first time, non-citizens will be charged a hefty surcharge to enter US national parks (an extra $100/person, and annual passes for noncitizens will cost $250 instead of $80).

Our national parks are absolute jewels, and a significant contributor to US tourism. Or were.

https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm#changes-in-2026

Stone House (with Sofa), Harvard, CA, 2010.

All the pixels, only slightly damaged, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4611078542

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Me, in elevator just now. Two kids get on, push the 6 and 7 buttons (we were already past those floors), yell "six seven" in unison, and look to me for a reaction, which, because I am an old sourpus, wasn't forthcoming.

No one won. It was a stalemate.

I have mixed feelings about Le Corbusier's architecture (to say nothing of his urban planning philosophy - he clearly influenced Robert Moses), but I think the UN Secretariat building was one of his successes.

An aside: If you look at the full resolution version (downloadable on flickr), you can see the HF amateur radio antenna on the roof. Nerds are everywhere, even/especially at the UN. There's also a family taking a group picture on the street in front.

The UN Secretariat building was designed by an international team of architects (most notably Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer) and completed in 1950. It was the first important "International Style" modernist skyscraper in New York - exemplified here here by a simple, unadorned rectangle with reflective glass curtain walls on either side.

Glass box office buildings became almost cliche in mid-century NYC, but the UN remains unusual in being set apart in the skyline, uncrowded by neighbors.

Love them or hate them, mid-century rectangular glass curtain buildings like this are easy to dismiss as being "boring", but I think that misses something.

Reflections of the surroundings become part of the facade, which changes at different angles and throughout the day. I visited several times and made dozens of photos, all quite different, before I settled on this one, and there are infinitely many photos others could make, all unique. (Similar to the new World Trade Center in this regard).

Captured with the Phase One Achromatic back and the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR-Digaron lens, with the back shifted down 8.5mm to maintain the building's geometry. I brought out contrast in the sky with a polarizer, but otherwise used no color contrast filtration. The camera was positioned across the avenue about 10 meters up from the plaza level (at the bottom of the "canyon" of the skyline reflected in the bottom center of the building).

United Nations General Assembly Building, NYC, 2021

All the pixels, each with diplomatic immunity, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51381729335

#photography

In a few days many of us will participate in a sacred American ritual with well-defined roles. Some of us will feed our extended families. Some of us will be the racist uncles. And others of us will quietly update the firmware and apply security patches to our elderly relatives' devices.