The Scowl as a Fashion Accessory
Leica M-E
She’s Just Not That Into You
Body Language
Still Fiercely a Man
It’s Chinatown, Jake…
Great article on LA’s Chinatown and the decline and changes that have occurred there in the last two decades. Read it here.
Ladrillo Rojo
Inked Up
Hollywood Jewels: Part 2
Hollywood Jewels: Part 1
Conspicuous Consumption
Fast glass in fading light…
Moments
Sunset Blvd
Dilapidated mansion on Sunset in Beverly Hills. Just like that one in the movie. Seemingly abandoned. But who knows? Maybe there’s a monkey playing the organ in there.
The Unconventional Sharing of a Hoodie
Public transportation, the lowly bus, doesn’t roll over the rarified pavement of Santa Monica’s Montana Avenue anywhere near as often as it does a mile or so south, on the more common asphalt of Wilshire Blvd. So these ladies were waiting a long time on a gloomy chilly late afternoon just a stone’s throw from the icy Pacific. July notwithstanding. Sooner or later people will do what they have to to keep warm. The not-poor things. 😉 Top photo is the last (or thereabouts) in the sequence.
Gorgeous
Walk of Fame
Right Lane Must Turn Right
Mother’s Touch
Liquid and Cool
Wheels and Lookouts
50’Cron, Last Light of Day
Whenever I remove the $4000 Leica 50mm 1.4 Summilux ASPH lens from my Leica M-E and mount the Leica 50mm 2.0 Summicron, 20 years or so old, made in Canada, that set me back just $475, I’m always blown away.
There often seems to be a color explosion on my M-E’s monitor. The lens is so incredibly capable. So sharp. So perfect. So much color and contrast. If you think you have to spend thousands to shoot the very best Leica glass, you’d be wrong.
The 50 Summicron lacks NOTHING in terms of the sharpness, color, and contrast that you find on the 50 ‘Lux. In some ways, it seems to exceed the ‘Lux.
With the Summiluxes you get a capability provided by the extra stop of light available and the fact that the performance of the lens at that 1.4 aperture is stellar. But that capability and the expense of making that lens does not mean that it’s a better lens than the Summicron. Leica says their 50’Crons are ‘without compromise’, implying what many know, that in order to create a lens that will perform at 1.4 like the Summiluxes perform, there will be some compromises.
This website is named for the 50’lux, but my heart belongs to my 50’cron. Here in iffy iffy light, all shot at f/2 from a moving car. Huh?
Upstairs Renovations
Not our upstairs, mind you. We don’t have an upstairs. We have Leica GEAR! 😉 Our friends are very proud of all the work they’ve done. Their home is about a half mile from the Pacific Ocean, which you can see from their back porch and even better from their roof. So that light is the real deal. These were taken in a rush as we were given a quick tour on the 4th of July. I’d like to have a couple of hours down there shooting the great detail work with all that light and the great Leica and Zeiss glass I’m lucky enough to own. Instead of an upstairs. 😉
Profile of Beauty
Did you press it?
TMI, bro.
If you’re going to smoke, really think about it…
The Bridge Behind Them
Sunday Color Picture Book
It’s Just a Smile Turned Upside Down
Red and Green
Sunset Strip Scenes
An otherwise fantastic day in Los Angeles…
Two weeks ago today we started out down Pico Blvd., oblivious, enjoying our afternoon taking pictures. President Obama was in town and in the Santa Monica area so all the helicopters made perfect sense. So did the police barricades far down Pico near Santa Monica College. People milled about as if the President were likely to come right past them.
Well, that’s what we thought anyway. Had I known that there was a shooting rampage near the campus resulting in multiple fatalities, a sadly common occurrence in the United States at this particular time, I would have come away with an entirely different set of images, I think. But incredibly, even after seeing up close the disruption caused by the actions of a madman, we went about our day continuing to believe that, once again, the president had caused a major interruption to the already crowded Westside.
It was only much later in the afternoon that we found out what had really happened. So here are some random shots from that afternoon. Some capture the tense scenes around SMC, some reflect the degree to which we were completely unaware that this was unlike every other day in LA.
As so often is the case, in retrospect things look much different.
Precious Cargo
Living Color
Not sure what was going on here…
I know it’s Polish model Joanna Krupa. But I don’t understand the photography aspect. Can’t be paparazzi, they’re too geared up and professional and paparazzi would have NO interest in whatever her name is. Can’t be a photo shoot. Photo shoots uh.. usually involve ONE photographer. Why would there be so many photographers fighting for a shot? Of Joanna Krupa. I just don’t get this. Someone enlighten me please. The only thing I can think of is that she’s got a really good publicist and it was a slow day in pseudo-celebrity land.
No $43,000,000 shot here?
Someone just paid that much for Barnett Newman’s “Onement VI”, a painting which consists of two vibrant blue rectangles neatly divided by a single, light blue line, an arrangement that Sotheby’s called “a portal to the sublime.”
Won’t someone please kindly pay Barnat Donald a million or so for this fine image taken late last year entitled “Is This Leica a Righteous Bitch to Focus Already? #10465”
I’m Seeing Hockney now… whether he’s there or not.
Scratches on Glass
Okay, that first one is just to give you the general idea. Here’s the kicker.
Bus Stop, Hollywood Blvd.
Two shots near a freeway overpass…
Why shooting Leica is Orgasmic
Men can say something is ‘orgasmic’ can’t we? If not then disregard the use of that word by me. 😉
Point is, it’s almost like that. What specifically am I talking about? What’s so special about shooting Leica that is different than other cameras or systems? MANY things, but I’m thinking of one in particular.
The other night we jumped up into Beverly Hills for a couple of margaritas at Chipotle on Beverly Drive. I brought the M-E and the 50mm 1.4 Summilux ASPH. Many great opportunities for low light shots along the street up there but, unfortunately, after two or three of those Chipotle margaritas I’m just lucky to be walking upright.
So I’m shooting some store windows etc. and the young lady I’ve spent my life with points to a window and says something effusively positive. But what’s behind the window is unlit and there’s a large store front awning shading the glass itself from any visible ambient light from the surrounding stores or street. So I go into the photographer’s speech about, well, honey, you don’t understand, there’s NO light here. It’s a nice display but your eyes had to practically adjust to even see it.
We photographers look for LIGHT, silly non-photographer. Etc.
Then I thought, well, of course, we can SEE it. So there must be some light illuminating it. So I have my camera on 800 ISO and I don’t even open the 50 ‘Lux all the way. It’s at f2. I stand very still, press the camera against my cheek. Dial the shutter till I get a solid dot. And then I watch something in my image as the shutter is open to make SURE I don’t move. That is the Leica Death Stare. Master it. Lock on an object and YOU WILL KNOW if you’ve moved and have to retake the picture.
Honestly, this has become one of the most fun things I do with my Leica cameras. I LOVE shooting at disgustingly slow shutter speeds. I’m not happy if I’m not doing it. It’s orgasmic.
The old photographic rule of choosing a shutter speed that’s faster than the focal length of your lens in order to eliminate camera shake? If you shoot Leica, you should know that, OF COURSE, this rule does NOT apply to you.
Not to be a jerk, but you SPENT that whatever thousands of dollars you spent to shoot this gear. And you’ve all too often heard people say… What’s the difference? What’s the point? It’s the photographer, not the camera!
Well this is a difference. A huge difference. And one of just many. I shot Nikon pro gear for most of the last ten years. A heavy D2Hs and D3 and D700. Massive lenses that jut out 6 inches from the body of the camera, and more. I wasn’t comfortable shooting less than 1/250 of the second! You’d BETTER adhere to photographic rules and guidelines like the one stated above. And then, hold your breath!
But with a Leica M-anything? Just never mind all that. It’s not your concern at all. If it is, you’re doing something wrong. The flatness of the M bodies and the slim center of gravity allow you to hold the camera firm against your cheek and there’s NO long heavy lens to teeter the center of gravity and blur your photograph.
And, as a result, you can practically make your own light. Yes, the light is bad. No, I don’t really care. There IS light, that is the only relevant point to a Leica shooter. We just have to operate in a different universe of expectations about how much is there and what we have to do with our camera to capture the light that is there. And these cameras do that like no other cameras on Earth.
The above shot was taken with a 50mm lens in almost no visible light at all. The shutter speed was 1/8th of a second. And I was drunk.
Young man in ball cap
Two Girls, La Brea Blvd
Reflections of
High Fidelity
The United Colors of Leica
We all have our crosses to bear
Seemed an appropriate moment to post this recent shot. And I suppose the corner of Hollywood and Highland is as good a place as any to reenact an iconic biblical moment. But hey, that guy is wearing some pretty comfortable looking shoes. That’s cheating.
I am a confirmed heathen, but to all who celebrate, Happy Easter and Happy Passover.
The thousand yard stare
Color I can live with from the Leica M-E
After two years of shooting and scanning film, what I wanted in terms of skin tones and the general color look from my new M-E was something much different than what I settled for when I owned an M9 three years earlier. By living with the results of scanning analog film I came to accept that color would rarely if ever match the accuracy attainable with modern professional digital systems by Canon and Nikon.
Maybe if I’d had the processing and scanning done at a professional lab, and paid through the nose for some premium service, I would have seen markedly better results. But I opted for the much less expensive, and more satisfying, route of scanning myself.
So when I decided to go back to shooting Leica digital my desires and expectations for color and tonality had been changed. But also my aesthetic for the end result of the act of photographing something itself had changed.
I now looked at final images that I put online or show to people as the product of a process of ME applying those tastes and desires to all of my shots as opposed to just going with either the look of the RAW file, or, worse, going with the crowd and ending up with an image look that was consistent with what other M9/M-E shooters were choosing for their work.
The color that I go for now, what I’m shooting for in my post processing, comes as a result of dealing with film scans for two years. It may not be the same technology and the end result may look nothing like film scans to me or to anyone else. But what I want now from my images is informed largely from the experience of shooting and scanning film.
Bottom line. There are no rules. The camera produces a RAW image file. We owe no loyalty or fidelity to the look of the RAW file or to what other M9/M-E shooters are doing with their images. The color in these pictures pleases me. That’s a heck of a statement as far as I’m concerned because that has not always been an easy place for me to get to with this gear. I’m happy to be getting there with some frequency this time around.
SIT!
50'Lux 