Rooftop pool, Four Seasons, Mumbai
We are in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, in India. Population 20 million or so.
We are staying at the Four Seasons Hotel, in an all glass, floor to ceiling suite, on the 30th floor.
Above is the rooftop pool.
Below, is the view out of my window
What you are looking at (besides the Indian Ocean) is a massive slum, right next to the Four Seasons.
That’s India for you.
Incredible wealth and incredible poverty (just like in Slumdog Millionaire) literally right next to one another.
The security at the Four Seasons is very tight (in light of the Taj terrorist attack, no surprise). They have massive sliding gates and dogs and armed guys who go through every car before it gets in. Once inside, you are wrapped in a world of wood and glass and polished marble and lots of people scurrying to help you and tons of air conditioning. Outside it is different.
So needless to say, as soon as I got the bags, I grabbed the new Leica M9 (the 8, you will recall, was trashed) and headed across the street.
There are, so I am told, 100,000 people crammed into this relatively small space, living cheek by jowel. The houses are tiny. The ones I went into had perhaps 1o people to a room, and they often do their business whether its selling vegetables or ironing shirts, from there as well.
9 Comments
Michael Rosenblum March 04, 2010
Well, thanks for the comments.
Personally, I like them, but that’s all a matter of personal taste.
Go get yourself the M9, lovely camera.
I am very happy with it.
By the way, there is no ‘lady in orange’.
There is one in yellow.
Maybe you should get your eyes checked.
fosca March 03, 2010
well now, let me rephrase what i thought i would maybe get around not to. i think the snaps you took of those indians in their habitat are an insult to them and to leica, no matter which, m6,7,8,9 or s2. i don´t care. the pictures are all out of focus and i would probably expect one of your fellow passengers who payed for their trip to bore the living sh.. out of their relatives back home with those. no image formation, graphics, expression and on top of all shot on automatic setting. if in doubt do bressons trick and turn them upside down. set them black and white to fall asleep. my hope is that the lady in orange didn´t put a spell on you for intruding.
“if your pictures are not good enough, you´re not close enough.”
robert capa
Michael Rosenblum March 03, 2010
I had M6, M7, M8 and now M9.
M8 was first generation digital for Leica and it had lots of problems.
They seem to have worked them out this time.
As for depth of field control, M9 has f-stop override which allows meter to be driven by f-stop preferences. Nice touch. Was not on the 8.
fosca March 03, 2010
yeah, please, please teach me about it. maybe i learn about the reason why i am selling an m6, 35mm/2.0 leica, 90mm/2.0 leica and a 25mm/4 voigtlander lens.
Michael Rosenblum March 03, 2010
You get a lot more control over depth of field with the Leica than you do in video, for many reasons.
fosca March 03, 2010
your video camera has an autofocus as opposed to the m9 i hope.
Michael Rosenblum March 02, 2010
Actually, I take the stills and then make large silkscreen prints from them (like Warhol or Rauschenberg). Hard to do with video.
But of course, there is a direct connection between the way I work in stills and video – sequences, don’t move the camera, frame the shots and so on.
Avery March 02, 2010
Wondering? Why you didn’t put together a video instead of shooting stills?
Rachelle March 02, 2010
What a contrast!
I stumbled upon this quote (well, it’s a bit longer than a quote) today and it made me think of you …
“A hundred years ago, Wagner conceived of a perfect and all-embracing art,combining music, drama, painting, and the dance, but in his wildest imagination he had no hint what infinite possibilities were to become commonplace through the invention of recording, radio, cinema and television. There already have been geniuses combining the arts in the mass-communications media, and they have already given us powerful new art forms. The future holds bright promise for those who imaginations are trained to play on the vast orchestra of the art-in-combination. Such supermen will appear most certainly in those environments which provide contact with all the arts, but even those who devote themselves to a single phase of art will benefit from broadened horizons.”
1966, Walter Elias ( Walt ) Disney