The Leica Year

The Starting Point

To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

~Henri Cartier-Bresson

For one year’s time, I plan to fulfill the ideals within this quote; to take my Leica M4 and with my breath held, capture the world on film. As a film photographer, I’m already comfortable with sliding a roll in the camera and feeling the tension of the film as I advance it. So why am I doing this project? Mainly, I want to get better. This project seemed like an interesting way to do so.

I’ll be starting this project soon. Possibly in the next couple of weeks, but first I just need to finish the rolls of film I have in my other cameras.

Equipment & Guidelines

Before I start this project, I want to make sure I have all the equipment I need and that I understand all the guidelines that have been laid before me. In Mike Johnston’s article, “The Leica as a Teacher”, one’s equipment should be a Leica M body, a single-focal-length lens, and one type of black and white film. As I stated before, I’ll be using my Leica M4 for this project. I’ve had my M4 since the winter of 2007. It is always at my side, everywhere I go. It is not my first camera (that would be my broken Yashica 124G) but the M4 will always be the one I cherish the most.

When I bought the M4 I didn’t have enough money to buy a lens at the same time. So I had to wait two whole months before I purchased a lens and was finally able to take some photographs with the camera. The lens that I bought was a 50/2 Dual Range Summicron. It didn’t come with the goggles that are normally pair with this lens, but that was alright. If the M4 wasn’t already heavy enough, this lens definitely brings more heft to the camera. The goggles might have made it unbearable. In any case, this lens will be the one I will use for the duration of the project.

For a black and white film I first thought about going with one of my favorites, Fuji Neopan 1600. I just love the grainy look I get with it when I have the film pushed to 3200iso. But for this project I need a middle range film, so I decided to go with Fomapan 400. It also helps that the film is fairly cheap too.

For the project, the guidelines seem fairly doable. Participants are to:

• Shoot at least two rolls a week
• Proof the rolls of film by contact and file them sequentially in a notebook
• Get or make between one and six workprints per roll
• Every five or ten rolls or so, have one nice print made

Taking two rolls a week should not be a huge problem. Once I finish them, I will be taking my rolls to a photolab to get developed. They will be able make a proof of rolls and prints for me. I’ll put the photos I have decided to be my workprints and nice prints up on the photoblog here. 

Now that I seem to have everything covered, I guess I should get started.

Perspective

And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

~ Richard Avedon

This past week has marked the start of the project for me. Over the past few days I’ve wandered around parts of the city, camera in hand, taking photos of people, place and things that sparked my interests. but as I finish my second roll for the week, I come to realize something; I’m a creature of habit.

My mind flashed forward a few months ahead and I pictured myself frustrated that I’m taking photos of the same places and things over and over again. I don’t want that to happened. So I have to venture out of my comfort zone and go to new places and find new people to take photos of. Hopefully I can travel to some different cities during this year and capture different perspectives of life. Until then, a different neighborhood. A different outlook.

Tension

I’m three weeks into the project and I’ve come across my first hurdle. It is kinda big cause my lens is the said “hurdle”. While I was out taking photos with a friend yesterday, I went to focus on a building downtown. As I set the focus towards infinity, I was getting tension from the lens. A lot of tension. 

Being comfortable with my M4 and the lens I knew something was wrong, and I didn’t take the photo. I detached the lens from the body and reattached it firmly thinking that might help. It didn’t. I’m still getting tension when I try to focus the lens to infinity.

Not sure what I can do with it but the lens still works at the other ranges fine. If it does get worse, I guess I’ll have to switch to my 90/2.8 Elmarit. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. I want to finish this project with the lens I started with.

Process

Since starting this project, my plan has been to complete two rolls of film each week. Start a roll on Sunday or Monday and have it completed by Wednesday. Then start on the second roll immediately and have it done by the following Sunday. I have to say that I’ve been able to keep up this slow and steady pace. There have been a couple of weeks where I’ve been slow on finishing the first roll and finding myself shooting the whole second roll in one day. Happily, I’ve been at events, on those slow weeks, that have burn up the 36 frames on the roll in a matter of a couple of hours. The recent photos of my friends and I at Oktoberfest in Seattle are a prime example.

When I finish my two rolls for the week I would normally wander over to Panda Labs to drop them off to be processed then go do lunch somewhere around town. In a couple of days they would be ready. I would pick them up, choose which 5 from each roll I liked the best, put them in the queue for the previous week and head back out to finish my rolls for the current week. The whole process worked well…before I got a job

I’m working now, which I’m very happy for, but it has become a strain on my process. I can’t just go out during the day, in some random part of the city, and take pictures for a few hours. I am now stuck in a specific part of town for 40hrs a week. Now, I have to rush to Panda Labs after work to drop off and pick up my film before they close. Soon, I’m gonna have to cram my 10 photos for this week into 5-4 days instead of having all 7. I’m gonna have to find a new way to juggle these balls so it can go as smooth as it did before the new job.

This is my way of saying, “Sorry for the delay in photos being posted on this site. New photos for Week #5 should be up starting Wednesday evening.”

Sunny 16

At the start of Week #7, I found myself starring at a new hurdle. The newest problem? I seem to have lost my light meter. It was a nice one too. A Sekonic L-308S that has helped me figure out the correct lighting for many of my photos. I seemed to have misplaced it on my way back home from shooting the Downtown Throwdown snowboard competition I stumbled upon while shooting through my second roll for Week #6. It will be sorely missed.

So while I scrape up enough cash to buy it’s replacement, I figure I would just use the “Sunny 16 Rule” for Week #7 and on. As much as I love having my light meter in hand to gauge the lighting for a particular shot, sometimes it felt cumbersome to have it on me. For those of you not familiar with the Sunny 16 Rule, it’s a clever little mnemonic device to helps one shoot without the use of a light meter. The rule simply states:

“On a sunny day set aperture to f/16 and shutter speed to the ISO film speed.”

So, if I’m using my Fomapan 400 B&W film on a sunny day, I would set the aperture to f/16 and shutter speed to 1/500 (since that is the nearest speed on my camera to 1/400). Then, if I want to shoot at something with the aperture at f/11, I would change to shutter speed to one click away, which on my camera it would be 1/1000.

So I looked at this unfortunate situation as a great learning opportunity. The pictures will tell the tale of how successful I was in this endeavour.

Sunny 16 Rule