Back home and back here

Here I am, back from another stay in Spain, and ready to post some more images from my 2014 trip. I realized that the longer I wait for "good shots" to post, the less I use this blog, so here we go with the first (see above): a photograph of the "Calle del Arco [de la catedral]" which leads directly to the cathedral and the city hall in Toledo, Spain.

I checked out a few maps and they showed this alley having the suggestive name of "Callejón del Orate" (something like "Madman's Alley").  However, in this last visit I noticed it having a name plate that said "Callejón del Nuncio Viejo"... because it ends in the "Calle del Nuncio Viejo."  Talk about disappointment! I really liked the initial name a whole lot better but facts (and names) are facts.

Street light in the corner of "Plaza Granada" and "Calle de la Sinagoga" in Toledo. Actually, the medium grey of the lower half of the wall is a very vivid red.

Would anyone believe this window is part of the "Callejón del Orate" shown above?  It's part of the wealth of Toledo, in terms of light, and shadow plays that abound in the city, not to mention the contrast between very old structures and relatively new constructions.  

I should spend more time in the Plaza de Zocodover, which is the main hub of commercial, social and human activity in Toledo (at least for those of us non-residents).  Lots of stores prey on tourists and offer overpriced junk, alternating with legitimate businesses like grocery stores and pharmacies. This dress was for sale at a place run by Chinese folks; they offer the noisiest, funkiest, loudest and not necessarily prettiest junk in town... to their own.

This time I will keep posting shots from my Toledo excursion of June-July 2014, done with (as you imagined) Leica M4-2.  I will also alternate them with photographs from other places and other times, while I wait for my newer shots from my most recent trip. Stay put and bookmark this blog if you haven't done it.  

Mixed Bag

This time we'll go for a few photographs from different rolls, different cameras.  Let's begin with an obvious choice...

If you guessed it's the M4-2 with a Hexanon 35mm lens... you have a good eye!  It also helps that this is the view of the Ayuntamiento de Toledo, during a time there was an art installation in town that was supposed to do precisely what I managed to photograph: a reflection.  I have no idea about the exposure, but I feel kinda proud of it.

Now... let's move onto something else.

This is the street where I live, on a very foggy fall day.  The camera... is a challenge now, but suffice it to say it's not any of my Leicas but the Nikon S2 with its 50mm f1.4 lens.  I no longer do much in color since the only reliable lab (oddly enough, in Walgreen's) closed shop.  I probably would have tried to keep it in business, but the corporate forces chose to remove it from our midst.  However, one never knows... I may try to do some photographs in slower film like Ektar, instead of the usual Kodak or Fuji ISO 400 (used here).

For another challenge, let's take a peek at this one:

Experience has taught me how to meter in cases like the one above: for the effect I wanted (strong contrasts), I metered for the highlights.  And the camera... is one Leica M4, fitted with a Summicron 50mm.  Mimi, one of our cats, likes taking in the sunrays right at the entrance door of the house, and that's what she was doing at the moment of taking this photograph.  Kind of domestic poetry... or prosaic bliss...

BTW, the camera used above is now in California, in the hands of another photographer that will take care of it better than I did.  Now, however, I do have yet another M4, as announced in a post below.  It came in late May, and I used it to make the images below (with a Summilux 35mm or a Summicron 50mm)...

Chairs in Fürther Strasse, Nürnberg (Leica M4, Summicron 50mm)

 Entrance to Metro Station, Nürnberg (Leica M4, Summicron 50mm)

 Splitting Logs, Viking style, Roskilde, Denmark (Leica M4, Summilux 35mm)

 Bärenschance Metro Station Stairs, Nürnberg (Leica M4, Summilux 35mm)

The biggest difference in the way the images right above were made, compared to the earlier ones, is that I decided to change film speed, and use Arista ISO 100 instead.  Now, I did something quite risky, which was take all my stock of new film in a trip, without testing anything first.  Hence, I had no idea about how it would react to my sometimes bad metering, or whether it'd be tolerant to over- or under- exposure.  For all practical purposes, the only ISO 400 film I took with was an old roll of HP5 that I promptly burned in the first stage of our trip, Copenhagen.  All in all, when I saw the results, I was very pleased.  Not only that, I intend to stay with ISO 100 film for as long as I can before I choose something else.

One final note: I didn't develop the last four photographs (something I had intended to do).  Instead, I sent them to a place called The Darkroom, all the way in California.  Judging from the results, I can recommend most enthusiastically.  They do a nice and careful job with your photographs.

Soon enough, some gear porn.  I have now my Leica M2, in addition to a new(ish) Leica M4 (which I had to re-cover, as the leatherette was old enough to crack on me during our trip), and a nice Konica 90mm f2.8 lens.  This will be the last glass I ever buy!  In fact, I'm contemplating a couple of sales... but I won't bore anyone with that.  Stay cool if you're hot, and warm if you're cold!

Made in Spain

This summer of 2014 I was in Spain, family and all, with a group of undergraduate students from my university.  Needless to say, I took a film body.  Again, needless to say, it was not any other Leica but the one this blog was started for: my M4-2 (and its inseparable companion, the Hexanon 35mm f2 lens). 

Here are some of the results from Madrid.

Plaza Mayor, weekly market

Custom-Made Poem, made by artist at the famous El Rastro, in Madrid.

Antique vendor in El Rastro

I just liked the textures under the intense sun in Madrid.

The lady on the bicycle saw me prefocus from a distance and smiled.

Plaza Isabel II at night (I think this was done with the lens wide open and at 1/50th or 1/30th of a second).

Light in Spain offers never ending opportunities.  Here's what I saw in Toledo during my stay.

Light leaking from a corner...

Light drawing boundaries between wall and ground.

The few times it seems to be uniform or even, one has to move fast...

It also creates beautiful effects... every day.

And I learned that nothing says "light" louder than pleasant shadows.

And nothing says weird better than shadows too!

A farewell to Toledo: night in the Plaza de Zocodover.

So, even though I'm slightly dissappointed (frankly, I expected better from myself), all in all, it could have been worse.  I learned something from this: not to repeat myself.  I don't know how many times I took the same photograph (the canopy over the street), but then... it's such a pleasant experience to do it that I may end up doing it again... and you, my brethren, my reader, will be glad to waive your finger at me and say "I told you so..."

Until then, thanks for your patience and have a very merry Christmas!

Tilted frame

Even if I have a 35mm eternally attached to most of my camera bodies (my two M5s have it, and so do my M4 and M4-2, and one of my M6TTL), not always am I able to "take it all" in the frame.  Some times I have the need to tilt the camera in order to capture what I want within the frame.

All these photographs were made with my Konica Hexanon lens, with the exception of the 4th and 5th, in which I used a Voigtlander Ultron 28mm f2.
I do like the tilting of the frame; to me, it shows a slightly different view, less conventional, a bit quirky.  Hence, I do it often, and sometimes even in vertical.  If I find the ones I have in mind, I'll post them.  In the meanwhile, let me know if you have done this, when and why.

After a long absence...

It's been so long... and I don't want to look it up, because it's slightly embarrassing to have abandoned this blog for so long.  In any event, having these amateurish photographs stolen made me angry and blew the wind off my sails so bad that I simply didn't even want to look at this blog or share them again... ever.

But here I am anyway.  Readers or not, this will be an active blog, just the way I wanted it to be in the past.

In the meanwhile, let's get to the images:

This image is Miller St in DeKalb, IL, in early January, after a very snowy night.  Of course, I used my M4-2 and Hexanon 35 f2 lens, and Ilford XP2.

Possibly that same day, this fountain in Huntley Park, looked attractive enough to deserve a shot.

Tree shadow in my neighborhood.  I gave a two or three-stop compensation exposure (from f11 to f4), for this shot.