About RF shots

Granted, you can do these things with an SLR

(Chicago, Art Institute, hip shot with M3)

(Denver, park near the library and Art Museum, with my M4-2)

(Café tables near Sixth St, in Denver, with my M4-2 again)

Sure, an SLR could handle these shots just as well.  But then, there's the little aspect of conspicuousness, discretion and creativity.  I was able to walk by all these places, take the photographs without any more fussing than making sure they were in focus, and keep going my way.  Granted, I also had to think about the exposure, and either pre-meter or guess.  Fortunately, the fac that C-41 film is so forgiving also helps.  Not to mention that the little voice in my mind was reassuring me all the time with the famous mantra "This can be fixed with PS later."

In short, while SLRs allow the same (and more) technical possibilities as the rangefinder camera, the latter is better for your brains.  They pose challenges that the SLRs never met: wider frames to compose in (compare a 135mm top image area to what an SLR can do... up to 600mm!), use of the brain, and ease (no need to do a lot of camera adjustments on the spot).  Besides, they're a lot quieter!

It seems, then, that the best way to avoid Alzheimer's is to use a Leica.  

Going to the deep end...

Or, to put it differently, playing around the limitations of a rangefinder camera... 

The image above was done with an SLR and a very conventional, standard kit zoom.  The place is Cartagena, Colombia, where I also brought my Canonet (that was loooong before buying my Leicas; also, after that trip, even my wife admired my work, so I told myself I deserved a Leica afterwards).  However, on one or two occasions, I took my Nikon F80 with its 28-80 f4.5-5.6 (eew... that's slow) zoom, and that's when I snapped this photo of a statue by Fernando Botero in the popular Plaza Santo Domingo.  Distinctive aspects anyone?

I'll do it.

To me, it's only two definite markers that show this image was taken with an SLR.  First: long lens used here.  Second, relative closeness to the subject (this nice figure whose butt was always patted).  Then, the fact that I took it and remember it seals the deal.  In the end, I just have the head of a statue.  It may look "good" in a print... but only to those who know what it is and where it's placed and what it symbolizes (to many, Cartagena, but not to the entire world). 

Then, the one above, and the other below, were both taken with a Leica camera and a 50mm lens (my unfavored Summicron 50; I just don't use it enough).  The color photograph is from San Juan PR, a fancy store...  The one below is a store in the "new" section of Dresden, on Scala film. 

The difference are, I believe, pretty obvious and clear, but the consequences of those differences are what matter here.  In short, even if these mannequins had some distinctive feature of any kind, the cameras used didn't really allow for a close-up with as much detail as the image at the top.  I had to work around the images.  My interest, in both cases, was their clothes: the way mannequins inevitably draw attention to the clothes they wear because they suggest a human shape underneath.  And yet, these two were pretty flawed in that the clothes didn't sit, say, in a natural way.  

I had to include the environment here.  And, of course, with that inclusion, the whole image changes in the end.  The lens limitation simply forced me to rethink the image... and I believe the results are at least more informative.  As opposed as a lonely detail of a statue, like the top, I wound up with two images that say something about the place in which they are, and the clothes and moment.  The PR dress speaks about a fancy, yet shallow store.  Not necessarily good, but not bad either.  The Dresden shot belies it was done behind a window, and it is, in a funky way, the anti-mannequin: the buttons are undone, suggesting that it's hiding something: the exposed skin.  Like someone trying to avoid ridicule or embarassment, the mannequin, leaning against the window, makes me think about the effort to conceal something that everybody already knows.  How worse can it get?

I don't know, but it's good to be able to spin this much text about three photographs, huh?

I'll continue with this idea later!

Mechanical Cameras

Digital revolution?  How many revolutions have to come yet?  What will be next?  In what way will any revolution change the very basic way in which a photograph is made?  Will it do away with aperture?  How about shutterspeed?  Digital simply replaced the media that captures the image.  So far, things are still the same.

However, the change will arrive in the shape of... 

A mechanical camera!

Even though I've been chronicling the seasons in this town (because my M4-2 has remained inactive due to its need of a CLA), I still ponder why I use film, and where photography can go after digital.  I do not think film will recover its preeminence, but then, it won't go away.  Just like LPs, it will stay for a long time yet, because it happens to have that particular "hand-made" quality about it that digital lacks.  

Brains instead of computers

Let's all hang onto our film gear.  Film isn't gone yet... and there's charm in graininess.  Otherwise, how to explain that a print of Lee Friedlander's may sell for thousands of dollars in a Christie's auction?  Subject matter (a young, nude Madonna?), or the fact that it's an artifact of the past?

' later!

Seasons in DeKalb

Corner of Sixth St and Lincoln Hwy

Hot Dog Stand during Cornfest

Small Coffee Bar (now gone) in February 2006

Living in DeKalb isn't glamorous, but I like it... probably for that reason.  However, that doesn't make our seasons less exciting.  The seasons have their way to insert themselves into our lives.  Here, two of the shots are from our warm weather, and one "came in from the cold" (can you not tell which one it is?).  All were taken with Leicas here in town... and I'm proud of each because, to a certain extent, they show what I've learned.  Also, and here I hope, they show a bit of what I like in DeKalb.

Common thread here: they all show people.  We'll continue with it next time!