Bill Maher is so right. No one wants to work anymore. I have countless parents calling me just as their children are graduating college to ask if I would counsel them on career choices. Nine times out of 10, I find out that the ladies want to be Kim Kardashian and the gents want to be house husbands.

They just don’t want to work. What’s the point of that? They think their parents wasted their lives working all the time in a world that is just falling apart. They would rather own less, and experience more.

Watch Bill outline the scenario for you in the following video.

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First Seen On 60 Minutes. Despite his Alzheimer’s, Tony Bennett prepares to perform with Lady Gaga. He is the miracle man, his wife, an angel, and Lady Gaga, a wonderful human being. What a wonderful world this could be.

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Second Act

Super fabulous news. The greatest PR agent to the stars is moving from LA to my hood. This is us at her son Jeremy’s Bar Mitzvah in 1986. We have been working together since 1974 and now we are the Golden Girls still making people, products and things famous. The fun has just begun. I am thrilled beyond description.

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My photo essay from “The Times Of Bill Cunningham,” an exhibit at the South Street Seaport. Mark Bozek, a filmmaker, who curated the show, spent time with our group.

We just bought the iPhone 13 Pro. Jefferson Graham explains why the improvements in the camera are so powerful. All smartphone cameras should have these features in the future.

Why I want the iPhone 13 Pro. Photography must.

If you don’t care about the camera, skip it

jeffersongraham

I’m a pro photographer so of course I want the new iPhone 13 Pro. I’ve got three key reasons why I can’t wait for the new model.

Caveat: if you have an older iPhone 11 or last year’s iPhone 12 and you don’t shoot much video, you can skip the upgrade. But if you take even the occasional photo and wish you could get closer to the action, the iPhone 13 Pro is worth considering.  

The selling points for the new phones start with the improved camera features. There’s also the usual: more powerful processing chip, longer lasting battery and more liberal internal storage.

Here’s why I’m excited:

Cinematic Video. The marquee feature of the 13 series, from the entry-level $699 Mini and $799 iPhone 13, to the $999 13 Pro and $1,099 13 Pro Max, is a whole new look to iPhone video that removes the “everything in focus all the time,” flat cellphone video look.

You know that blurring of the background effect that’s so popular in Portrait Mode? Now it will be available on video, bringing more pro-level quality to iPhone recordings, which was already great. With Portrait mode like adjustable focus to iPhone videos, the clips will look like they do in the movies, with the lead subject in focus while the background is not. Best of all, the focus can be re-adjusted after the fact, like the blur effect in Portrait Mode. This is a big deal and something I can’t do on my big Sony.  

77 mm Zoom: The “Portrait” lens on the Pro models expands from 65mm in the 12 Pro to 77mm, giving us a much stronger telephoto, getting us closer to the action.  

Since, like many photographers, my go-to lens for my Sony A7III is 24-70mm, I’ve now got the holy grail of zooms on a little phone in my pocket. (Sidenote: I shoot most portraits on my 70-200mm zoom at the 100mm+ mark, so the phone lens still has a ways to go.) And granted, an iPhone 12-77mm will never be as sharp as my $2,100 Sony G master lens, but what a treat to have it on my walk around camera, which is the one that fits into my pocket. (Equal time: I heard from several photographers who welcome the extra zoom on the iPhone, but note that the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has a more longer zoom, with the equivalent of a 200mm+ throw.)Erik Kuna 🚀 @erikkuna@jeffersongraham Good to see they’re catching up to @SamsungMobile and their s21 ultra at 14-240mm optical. Still got a way to go though… @Apple getting to 200mm optical would be the game changer.September 14th 2021

Macro: Again, this feature is only on the Pro models, allowing us to get ultra ultra close, to capture objects as close as 2 centimeters from the phone. That’s a close-up!

Aside from that, the new phones look pretty identical. Except for a smaller notch on the front and a redesigned look to the camera lenses. That’s 2 on the entry level iPhone 13 and Mini editions, and 3 for the Pro and Max versions. And the 4 new models all start with a way more generous 128 GB of storage, which is important. You shoot a lot of high-resolution photos and videos, download a lot of apps and such, and you’ll need as much storage as you can get. Remember just a few years ago when new phones had just 16 GB? 

The Big Question?

So if you have an iPhone 12 Pro Max do you need to ditch it for the new models? I would for the video, telephoto and macro, but that’s me. I think it’s a pretty easy decision. I use the iPhone professionally, for shooting my Photowalks travel photography series, and believe me, the pro looking “Cinematic” focus will really be handy, as will the expanded telephoto and macro. 

(Of course, let’s see how it all works out when we get the phones for review.) 

PRICING

One of the great things about new iPhones is seeing older phones getting their prices lowered. The 12 is now $100 off at $699, while the geekier 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max models, the ones with better cameras, have been discontinued. So if you have an older phone and its upgrade time, you really have no choice but to go forward with a 13 Pro.

• iPhone 13 Mini: $699
• iPhone 13: $799
• iPhone 13 Pro: $999
• iPhone 13 Pro Max: $1,099

The older iPhone 12 at $699 is actually $749 once you upgrade the storage to 128 GB (which you’ll want) so at that rate, why not spend the extra $50 and get the newer iPhone 13 model?

Photography focused folks are looking at $1K for the Pro, others may be happy with 2 camera lenses instead of 3.

And if you don’t feel like upgrading at all, but want great new photo features for your iPhone, check out my recent post on what’s new for the iOS 15 operating system upgrade for photographers. These features are free to all. The software update will be available on 9/20.

Jefferson Graham’s newsletter📸 Cool new photo features in iOS 15Read more16 days ago · 3 likes · 3 comments · jeffersongraham

The new iPhones begin pre-order Friday at 5 a.m. PT, and will be in stores on Sept. 24. 

Apple also introduced two new iPads. The entry-level $329 iPad has a more powerful chip and better camera, the iPad Mini gets a bigger screen and a $100 price boost to $499.

Congratulations to Musical Director Ron Abel who is one of the major talents bringing Broadway back. He and some of the most powerful Broadway voices performed last night at the Greenroom 42 at the Yotel. We were so thrilled to witness this performance.

I was amazed to read that Tuesday Weld actually bought a tiny condo in Montauk. We had a second home there for 10 years. We would drive by the Montauk Manor all the time. It’s beautiful to look at but it gave me the creeps because it always looked vacant. Now, I would love to go back, wait outside, and see if I could spot Ms. Weld. I would love to know why she picked that place. The price, the view, family nearby?

Dirt is a Real Estate newsletter

Tuesday Weld Scoops Up Compact Hamptons Condo

Early ‘60s Hollywood teen queen Tuesday Weld, who sold her longtime oceanfront property in Montauk in 2009, apparently misses the historic Hamptons town because she’s recently purchased a tiny condo there for $335,000. It was repped by Constance Tighe and John Taylor at Corcoran.

The native New Yorker actually sold two properties in 2009; the Montauk house, which traded for $6.75 million, and a prewar condo on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that went for just over a million. A few years earlier, in 2006, she bought a place in Colorado, just outside Aspen, for $950,000, and in 2018 she added house in Hollywood for $1.77 million.

Well maintained, the perfectly ordinary condo Weld bought this summer is in the historic Montauk Manor. At just 661 square feet, the one-bedroom unit does include two bathrooms, along with two separate entrances. Common charges are hefty at about $2,500 per month.

The Tudor-style Manor was built in 1926 by Carl G. Fisher, the developer of Miami Beach, who intended to make Montauk the “Miami Beach of the North.” Originally a hotel, the 140-unit condo building was designed by Schultze and Weaver, responsible for the Breakers in Palm Beach, the Biltmore in Los Angeles, and the Pierre, the Sherry-Netherland and the original Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Amenities include an on-site restaurant, indoor and outdoor pools, tennis, and shuttles to the beach.

The actress, whose career took her from teenage stardom to a 1978 Oscar nomination for “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” comes from the Boston Brahmin Weld family. Her father died when Tuesday (born Susan) was only four. She told Life magazine in 1971, “My father’s family came from Tuxedo Park, and they offered to take us kids and pay for our education, on the condition that Mama never see us again.”

Instead, the young Tuesday worked as a model to support the family and became a successful actress. She was a Golden Globe nominee for the lead role in the 1972 movie of Joan Didion’s novel “Play It as It Lays” and an Emmy nominee opposite Donald Sutherland in the 1983 TV movie “The Winter of Our Discontent.”

She did win a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcomer in 1960, when she was 17.

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Eliot and I visited Bridge Red Studios/Project Space in (Biscayne Park), North Miami, yesterday. We admire the work of Evelyn Politzer. Like many others, she is taking the traditions of quilting, sewing, crocheting, embroidery, knitting and beadwork and turning them into art. Photos by Eliot Hess.

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