Category Archives: Photographs

A Doggy portfolio

Photographs

If you dislike dogs, don’t bother viewing this.

If your parents were wise enough to expose you to the four legged set – no, not cats or horses – when you were a child, chances are you turned out pretty well. After all, anyone who can conduct a conversation with a dog knows that this is a pursuit of an intellectual kind on a level sadly lost to those lonely souls who have never enjoyed canine company.

I do not have the keyword ‘dogs’ in my Aperture library. It simply never occurred to me to do that. But leafing through my early monochrome snaps the other day, I was struck by the sheer number of pictures where a pup featured heavily in the subject matter.

Some maintain that people ‘own’ dogs simply because of the guaranteed love the animals unselfishly offer. Well, that may be true for Labradors and Golden Retrievers, hardly the intellectual end of the genus dog, but for me I like a little more challenge and discourse in my canine relationships, meaning it starts and stops with terriers. These chaps can give you a fair run for the money when it comes to politics, economics or even affairs of the heart, and who ever encountered a terrier interested in political office? No, terriers are too smart and honest for that.

So here, without more ado, are some old doggy snaps from the archive which just happen to feature special canines. And, in my book, all dogs are special. Why, there’s even a terrier or two to be found here.


Greenwich, London


Cruft’s Dog Show, London


Brighton, England


Kensington, London


Tuileries Gardens, Paris


Montmartre, Paris


Cruft’s Dog Show, London

Working at widescreen

Photographs

16:9 is really tall!

As I mentioned earlier, I’m getting more serious about using the full frame in widescreen format. That is what the Panasonic Lumix LX-1 delivers and it’s really a pretty exciting experience to see images this wide …. or tall.

Here’s my 2006 Halloween picture – no drama. Just one lonely, uncarved pumpkin lolling around in the lovely afternoon light, minding its own business. A Hopper pumpkin, if you like.

By contrast, this sad scene of an abandoned toy in an alleyway, snapped seconds later, is in monochrome, to heighten the feeling of that moment:

Snapped while strolling with Bert the Border Terrier, which confirms that the only good camera is the one you have with you. Or, in the case of the LX-1, the one you have just whipped out of your pocket.

A part of me is no more

Cameras, Leica, Photographs, Photography

After 35 years, my Leica M3 is sold.

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.

Did I really needed to sell it? After all, it was so hard to buy, back on August 2, 1971. It had won many prizes and kept me in film and paper when I was a poor kid trying to make his way.

“It could be worth a lot one day” I thought.

“No, it’s a machine for taking pictures and it needs to be used. And I will not let it lie around gathering dust.”

Trying to console myself.

So right before packing it and including an autographed copy of my book, every picture in which had been taken with that M3, I ran through the shutter with the tape recorder on. There was that familiar second curtain bounce, common to all Ms, at 1/15th and 1/30th. The sound of the escapement on the slow speeds. The joyous sensuality of 1/60th or 1/125th. Not so much a click as a susurrus. The delayed action – so useful, I wonder they ever deleted it from later models.


A great shutter, one last time

But one thing none of the above can recreate is the feel of that Leica body and the flare free nature of the great view/rangefinder, equalled by the M2 and destroyed in later models by accountants who thought they knew better than the engineers.

And all those pleasant memories.

Pictures speak louder than words.

Roll 1, Picture 1 – a winner:

Girl on a train. My first ever Leica photograph, August 2, 1971. Roll 1, Picture 1. M3, 50mm Elmar, TriX

Then, but a few rolls of TriX later, that crazy wolfhound at Cruft’s Dog Show:


Crufts Dog Show, 1972. M3, 90mm Elmar, TriX at 800ASA

Or how about that tough guy with the balloons?


Balloon Guy, 1973. M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX

My first big prizewinner – Photographer of the Year, 1974, Photography Magazine (UK):


Comparisons, 1974. Reg Butler sculpture show, Holland Park, London. M3, 50mm DR Summicron, TriX

Or that Parisienne – I leave it to you to guess her profession:


Lady and dog, Paris, 1974. M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX

These and many more like it chronicle 1970s London and Paris in my book.

In 1977 that M3 accompanied me in the cabin of PanAm’s 747 with a one way ticket to America, leaving behind poor, socialist England, with its class distinctions, foul climate and punitive taxation.

And the magic continued, this time in color:


Late sun, Anchorage, Alaska, 1978. M3, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64

Later, when the west coast beckoned, the M3 was just as much at home:


Ojai, CA, 1990. M3, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64

But it would be disingenuous to preach ‘Change or Die’, as I am wont to do, and have this magnificent machine gathering dust in some never opened cupboard, a victim of digital technology.

So the Leica M3 had to move on.

May its next custodian have thirty-five great years with it.

Sob.