Urban Landscapes
A Photographic Journey 1957 - 2023
Urban Landscapes Jay Siegel By Jay Siegel
Urban Landscapes
A Photographic Journey 1957 - 2023
Voightlander Vitto B 1957
Olympus Pen FT 1967
Olympus OM-1 1972
Oly D-320L 1997
Olympus OM-D E-M1 2017 Front Cover - Toronto Early 1970’s
In summer of 1957 I was a rising Junior in High School and joined a college group that spent the summer on an educational tour of Western Euroupe. We stayed at university dorms, met with political parties, attended seminars on the socio-political issues of Europe, visited museums, and the usual tourist attractions. On the advice of a friend, my dad bought a Voightlander Vitto B camera by mail from 47th St. Photo in New York City. It was a "manual" camera - no light meter nor autofocusing. I followed the "Sunny 16" rule - on a bright, sunny day, set the exposure to f16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO film speed. when the light is less, "guestimate" how much to open up the f-stop. On my return home I was pleasantly surprised by the number of successful pictures from that trip. It was the beginning of my journey in photography. In 1967, I decided to take photography as a serious hobby. I took an adult education dourse on black and white photography including darkroom work. I needed to upgrade my camera and bought an Olympus Pen FT and a few lenses from Hong Kong by mail order (this was way before the Internet). I settled on an Olympus as they did not block importing cameras by individuals and you didn't have to file off the logo on the camera. The Pen FT is a single-lens reflex (SLR) half-frame camera with a built in metering system. In 1972, I upgraded to a full-frame Olympus SLR. In 1997, forty years after my first analog camera, I bought my first digital camera, an Olympus D-320L. This is a low resolution (less than 1MB sensor) camera. While low in resolution it was a big introduction to how photography was going to be changed by the digital "revolution." In the ensuing years I upgraded my digital camera as Olympus updated the resolution and other attributes of their digital cameras. In 2017, sixty years after the Voightlander, I bought an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II. It has been my main camera until two years ago when I began to rely solely on my iPhone for photographs exept for special events. The last picture and the picture on the back cover were shot with an iPhone. On my photographic journey, I realized that I would often shoot a picture in an urban setting as if I was photographing a landscape in nature -- the scene was majestic, monumental, and quiet - an Urban Landscape. Back Cover - Jackson, California, 2015
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2
Paris, France, 1957
Paddington Station, London, UK, 1957 3
4
Berlin, Germ
many, 1957
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6
San Jose, Califor
rnia, Late 1960’s
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8
San Jose, Califor
rnia, Late 1960’s
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Palo Alto, California, Late 1960’s
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Redwood City, California, Late 1960’s
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12
Los Angeles, C
California, 1970
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14
Toronto, Canad
da, Early 1970’s
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16
Toronto, Canad
da, Early 1970’s
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18
Toronto, Canad
da, Early 1970’s
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20
Toronto, Canad
da, Early 1970’s
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Casa Vicens by Gaudi, Barcelona, Spain, 1971 Barcelona, Spain, 1971 22
1 Oaxaca, Mexico, 1990 23
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy, 1988
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Gugenheim Museum, N
NYC, mid 1970’s
Pantheon, Rome, Italy, 1996
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26
Bethleham Steel, P
Pennsylvania, 2014
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28
Bethleham Steel, P
Pennsylvania, 2014
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2013 30
Bologna, Italy, 2015
31
Mantanza, Cuba, 2016 32
Caesarea, Israel, 2020 33
London, UK, 1997 34
San Francisco, California, 2023 35