Category Archives: Photographs

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.

Did he, or didn’t he?

Photographs, Photography

Decisive moments don’t last.

In London, on business back in 2000, I made a point of taking some time off and rambling around the charmed streets of Mayfair, where my hotel happened to be.

Something of a throwback as I had not seriously indulged in street photography since leaving New York in 1987, having left London – heaven for street snappers – ten years earlier.

On this trip I brought along the Leica M6 (a camera with a flawed rangefinder which flared out at the drop of a hat) and but two lenses – the 35mm Asph Summicron and the 90mm Elmarit-M. You could go around the world with little more and have just the right equipment for nearly all photographic opportunities. And this was before everyone passing through an airport was subjected to deadly levels of rays passing for security. Not so good for film stock either.

This decisive moment stuff is not as difficult as it seems, with a bit of practice. The secret is in anticipating the juxtaposition of subjects a few seconds before things come to pass. The result is unhurried and fairly predictable, though a stroke of luck never hurts.

For those who love London – and absent the weather what’s not to love? – these obviously wealthy women were making their way down Conduit Street from Berkeley Square. I always made a point on London trips of paying a visit to the Rolls Royce dealer in Mayfair, not as a prospective customer, but merely as one gawking at the latest and greatest in their showroom. That day it was a gorgeous yellow pre-war Rolls.

I spotted them some fifty yards away, allowing me time to mess with that awkward meter and pretending to gaze at the car in the showroom. As they passed me it was the work of a second to raise the camera to eye level and press the shutter. Only as I was doing so the street smart one of the two cast a backward glance of undiluted anger at me. On the one hand she was probably concerned that her privacy had been invaded. On the other, she couldn’t quite be sure whether her likeness had been captured or whether this was just one more tourist taking a picture of an exotic car. Adding to her confusion was the fact that I was wearing my ever present Harris Tweed cap, like a proper Englishman. You can see my reflection in the front side window of the car.


The Angry Woman. Rolls Royce dealer, Conduit Street, London, 2000. Leica M6, 35mm Summicron.

I delayed pressing the button for the merest moment as she looked back at me and the picture was in the bag. It says everything I like and dislike about the English dowager in one decisive moment and is a pleasant memory of a fine trip.

Five stars

Photographs, Photography

About those ‘best’ pictures.

One thing both Aperture and iPhoto encourage the user to do is to rate images with up to five stars. What constitutes a one, two, three, four or five star image is left up to you, of course, but the system adds a useful learning process to the cataloging experience.

As my use of Aperture is recent (as is the application) and I use it to store ‘photographs’ rather than ‘family snaps’ (iPhoto is ideal for those) I get to rate all the images in the Aperture database at one time, suggesting that I am at least applying like standards of evaluation. Over time this process may be worth less, for what seems great today may not pass muster tomorrow as taste and standards change. However, at this one point in time it seems to me the star ratings may be reasonably meaningful.

So what is a ‘Five Star’ image? For me that’s easy. It’s the one where my instinctive reaction is, simply, ‘Wow!’. I want to show that one to everybody, mount it, matt it, frame it. Rightly or wrongly, I expect you to like it. I will to come back to it time and again.

I have been taking ‘serious’ pictures since 1971, when I was twenty and for the first thirty years my ‘serious camera’ was a rangefinder Leica, so you will understand the preponderance of Leica and monochrome pictures in my Five Star list.

My Aperture library holds 2,748 pictures.

Of these but 64, or some 2%, get Five Stars.

18 of these are monochrome, all film.

5 are digital. (Three on the 5D, two on the LX-1, which tells you something about that little point-and-shoot)

44 are on 35mm film.

11 are on medium format.

4 are on large format.

39, no less, were taken on a Leica.

4 were with 20-28mm (or equivalent) lenses.

51 were with 35 or 50mm lenses, about evenly split.

6 were with 90mm lenses.

3 were with 200mm or longer.

So the most common thread is a 35 or 50mm lens on the Leica using TriX – hardly surprising for one who grew up as a street photographer. Now I no longer use film and my only Leica connection is the Leica lens on my Panasonic LX1, and a fine lens it is, invariably used at its widest 28mm setting in widescreen format.


A Five Star image.
Lonely – a tribute to Edward Hopper. Leica M2, 90mm Apo Summicon-M Asph, Kodak Gold 100.
The last day of the millenium. December 31, 1999, San Francisco

What is intriguing about the above small data set is that 5 out of the 64, or nearly 8%, were taken on digital, a medium I started using seriously with the purchase of the Canon 5D in February of this year, barely 8 months ago. Now when I converted the picture library to Aperture there were some 2,000 film pictures, at which point new additions were digital, so the ‘Five Star’ rate for film pictures is 3% (59/2000) whereas that for the digital additions is 0.5% (5/748). So that’s a high number of digital Five Stars added in an eight month period (over 35 years that extrapolates to 263 Five Star pictures!) but a low rate of Five Star digital snaps, barely 0.5%.

Which sort of points to where I had already arrived intuitively before running these numbers – digital, because of its accessibility and speedy production time, encourages you to take more pictures but there’s a lot of dross burying the jewels. But I think it’s a fair trade off. I would rather increase my output of Five Star pictures, even if the trade off is more mediocre ones.

Fast landscape

Photographs

The decisive moment exists in landscape pictures too.

Working on my beach series yesterday I was rambling along Grover Beach and idly eyeing the yellow Jeep wondering if something could be crafted aound it. True, I had noted a flock of some two hundred or so Common Tern minding their own business on the dunes nearby, but thought nothing of it. Fish eaters, these, so likely pretty smart, what with fish being so good for the grey matter. Known to attack marauding humans, too, so I kept my distance. A lovely bird – pure white with a jet black head and yellow beak. Quite the designer’s dream.

I am not, as a rule, the type who composes in the viewfinder, preferring to visualize the scene with my (not so great) eyes then administering the coup de grace with a quick raising of the camera to eye level and a pressing of the button. A legacy of years of street photographing, I suppose. Auto focus and exposure makes that approach even easier than in days of yore.

I found myself wondering about the tranisent lighting effects that can so quickly change a landscape. The times when the clouds open just so and you miss the shot because of some malfunction with the tripod. Landscapes are anything but static subjects.

But this one was, let’s face it, not going anywhere. The waves were rolling in on a fairly predictable schedule and the jolly yellow Jeep was parked. So I just sort of stood there, taking in the view on yesterday’s cool morning, glad I had remembered to pack my wool pullover, for it was but 58 degrees. (14 Celsius for those of you who follow the allegedly Beautiful Game of soccer, where he who gets away with the most fouls, and pays the officials most, wins).

Then for some reason known only to this gaggle of fish eaters a communal take-off took place and the magical moment was just that. A moment. Seconds later the tern had left and the little Jeep had driven off. Who said landscapes are static subjects?

Tern and Jeep. Canon EOS 5D, 24-105mm, 400 ISO.