Leica SL Image Thread ...post your examples here ....

[Alik]

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L1030055-2 by alik, on Flickr

[vikasmg]

Lotus

 

Leica Sl with 24-90mm

 

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- Vikas

(similar post on dpreview, but at higher resolution)

Edited October 21, 2017 by vikasmg

[Daedalus2000]

Covent Garden 

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[vikasmg]

The Same lotus 14 hours later

 

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- Vikas

[mumu]

Leica SL, Vario-Elmarit SL 24-90 ASPH, 100 ISO,

 

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[geetee1972]

Brick Lane is a bit of cliché. Don’t get me wrong it’s a fabulous part of London and very few places get close for nurturing quite the hubbub of creative energy that the makes the place almost literally hum with excitement.  But I am an outsider (as are most people there) and so the opportunity for being truly authentic with any picture to make while wandering around the Lane is limited. The risks of falling into cliché are very high so while I like the place, I rarely go there and am circumspect as to the images I make there and certainly of the people I approach.

With Russell, the man in this shot, I felt on relatively safe ground. It was very obvious that he was a guy taking a break from an otherwise (perhaps dull) corporate job to enjoy something more real and valuable about life – walking a dog. Indeed, Russell is a former (and still qualified) Chartered Accountant who now works as a recruitment consultant in the city. Nothing says more profoundly to me that here is a man who prefers to work with people rather than things’ and so has switched from accounting to relating. It will be a very different career path and perhaps not one that will so readily lead to a senior management or executive position within a large corporate entity (it might but it’s less likely) but still I think Russell will be happier for it. I hope so.

We make life choices all the time. Where we end up is a lot about what we choose; it’s also about what life will let us choose and sometimes it’s harder to make the decision we want because life pushes in a particular direction. Russell isn’t taking the path through life that ‘men’ typically take. He’s far more agreeable than most men, more polite and less likely to want to offend. His demeanour is softer and more compassionate and I have the sense that he perhaps carries a little more thought and worry about things than most men. He is very like me and I liked him because of that.

I think this is one of my favourite ‘stranger portraits’ for all these reasons; I love the way his dog looks at him expectantly for direction or engagement; his direct look to me is tinged with slight apprehension perhaps the result of my approach perhaps the result of being in a deeply reflective mood taking his lunch break to walk the office dog. I love the lighting, which was very flat and low contrast on this day but just bright enough to bring out the green of the grass land around him, which is itself, a little incongruous to the urban location. And I like the space around him, which heightens the sense of existentialism that I think is the main theme in this image.

I do not want to judge too much but if I ever had the sense that here was a man more desperately in need of becoming a father, of finding his purpose and legacy, it is in this encounter.

 

Man walking his dog near Brick Lane by Greg Turner, on Flickr

[HeinzX]

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A hidden cottage in the green - with 90/280

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[HeinzX]

A part of a monastery with dry fallen area - now flowers are in there. With SL and 24/90.

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[HeinzX]

Long corridor in a monastery - SL and 24/90.

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[frame-it]

SL + Leica 90mm M APO Summicron ASPH f2.0

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SL + Leica 90mm M APO Summicron ASPH f2.0

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[farnz]

Brick Lane is a bit of cliché. ...

For many photographers it's the very antithesis of a cliché.  Depends on your viewpoint I suppose.

 

Pete.

[geetee1972]

For many photographers it's the very antithesis of a cliché.  Depends on your viewpoint I suppose.

 

Pete.

 

Cliche: a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.

 

The fact that 'many' photographers regard it as to the antithesis of a cliche, is, ironically, precisely what makes it a cliche. I don't think it matters much though as long as you try to be honest and authentic about what story you try to tell.

[farnz]

Cliche: a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.

 

The fact that 'many' photographers regard it as to the antithesis of a cliche, is, ironically, precisely what makes it a cliche. I don't think it matters much though as long as you try to be honest and authentic about what story you try to tell.

 

I'm curious: how does Brick Lane fits into your own definition of a cliché?

 

Pete.

[rsmphoto]

21 SEM @ ƒ5.6 on the SL. Palais Garnier. Just testing the corners...

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Edited October 23, 2017 by rsmphoto

[rsmphoto]

And one more. same settings.

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[geetee1972]

I'm curious: how does Brick Lane fits into your own definition of a cliché?

 

Pete.

 

Glad you asked - gives me the chance to explain without being an arse!

 

In 1999 I used to live in Stamford Hill, right on the border with Stoke Newington. I used to like saying I lived in Stokey becauase at that time Stamford Hill still had something a prostiute and crack cocaine problem. I worked in the west end and used to take the bus down through Dalston and into the city. At that time, Brick Lane wasn't anywhere people had really heard of and then a young woman called Zadie Smith wrote a book all about the melting pot of cultures that could be found there and suddenly, Brick Lane is the next hip and fashionable place to be.

 

If you'd been a photographer back then, working around that area, documenting the lives that 'White Teeth' wrote about, then you'd have stood a chance at being authentic. You'd have been ahead of the fashion.

 

We're now 18 years down the road and Brick Lane is a whole world away from that authentic slice of gritty reality that originally caught everyone's attention. The poor were moved out and the trendy creative millenial set moved in from Soho. Brick Lane no longer represents the same cultural melthing pot but it still attracts hoardes of photographers who think that if they shoot on the street, their pictures will be cool and gritty and 'street'.

 

That's why it's a cliche.

[IkarusJohn]

Seriously?  Real poverty and gritty reality is the only authenticity, and you only have credibility if you're ahead of the hip and fashionable?

 

Crikey!

 

Isn't it possible that people just take pictures of what they see and like, or to capture a particular view of life that might be different from their own?  I'm sorry if this sounds dismissive, and I do agree with you that photographs do need to show a particular perspective, but ultimately a photograph stands on its own.  Your post comes across as being incredibly elitist, in a reverse snobbery way.  It's a bit like claiming authenticity only if you've been poor.  What's wrong with the trendy creative millennial set moving from Soho to Brick Lane, if that's what they want to do?  It might make the capturing of images of poverty (real people?) harder to do, but I see no particular merit in that on its own.

 

I remember once riding in a bus in Morocco.  My travelling colleague wanted to get a picture of an old woman climbing off the bus (I have no idea why).  She rushed off, and took the picture.  The old lady's  son, who was helping her off the bus, asked "why have you photographed my mother?"  Fair question - I don't see grittiness or poor people as being worthy of photography because they are down on luck.  I also question your commentary about Russell and his dog as having an underlying sneering quality about people who work in the City and just get on with their lives.

 

Whatever is happening now in Brick Lane (I haven't been there since eating curry with friends in the late 1980s) may well be worthy of photographing without the condescension of being a cliché because you were there first, or were you? or because the poor people and crack addicts have been forced out by people buying up the properties.

 

I don't mean this to be rude, I'm just seriously questioning what you're saying.

[LD_50]

As if poverty is somehow better for street photography or more authentic than anything else?

 

Like what you like. Why the need to categorize everything or condescend to other photographers?

 

I used to live in a metro area that was in a rebuilding phase. I guess I was there “ahead of the fashion.” As it became a trendier and pricier place to live, I lost some interest in the culture (mainly the busyness and noise) of the place and for various reasons, eventually moved. My photography interest didn’t change before or since. It’s simply different, not better or worse. Either end of the spectrum is cliche to someone.

 

This commentary reminds me of the articles written by nature photographers about “tourists” ruining the ability to shoot at many places. As if the photographers have some sort of inherent privilege to these places. They think themselves “ahead of the fashion” when in reality they’re no different than anyone else attracted to place. A good friend patronizes tourists this way when he’s out hiking and photographing in the Rocky Mountains. I’ve reminded him many times he’s a tourist as well, perhaps one who’s more skilled in the outdoors, but a tourist still.

Edited October 23, 2017 by LD_50

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[farnz]

 

 

... If you'd been a photographer back then, working around that area, documenting the lives that 'White Teeth' wrote about, then you'd have stood a chance at being authentic. ...

I was.  And I clearly remember Brick Lane before it was 'developed' and became trendy, same as Spitalfields, Camden, Brixton, the Brighton Lanes etc where you can buy any sort of tat with the emphasis on 'crafts' and cottage industry in place of greasy spoons, dodgy restaurants, newsagents, the local, the offie, charity shops etc.  These areas have inevitably moved on but I still talk to traders who I've known in Brick Lane for 25+ years and they're still there probably because they're mostly from pre-war family businesses.  The clientele has changed and gone up-market (perhaps thanks to Zadie Smith, perhaps not) but the marketeers and stallholders love it because the new clientele brings plenty of disposal cash, a less discerning eye, and less inclination to haggle prices down.

 

As a casual documenter of social change through the lens of a camera I don't consider the current Brick Lane et al as clichéd but a new opportunity to study people, interactions, and situations as they happen today.  I wonder whether perhaps you're in some way mourning the passing of a genre/lifestyle/culture/whatever and there's nothing wrong in that; I do so myself and it's eminently stronger after I've watched a film from the 1960's or before.  But life moves on.  I wasn't criticising your claim of cliché, just trying to understand your point of view.  What's authentic is what's there now whether we like it or not.  What was authentic 18 years ago was authentic 18 years ago.

 

Brick Lane clichéd?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps it's just become like so many other areas that have fallen to the inexorable march of what they call progress but when it boils down there's naked greed driving it.  Some things I mourn and other things I'm glad are gone now.  I'm just glad that I'm free to point my camera at people, things, and situations that please me.

 

Anyway, after our brief interlude perhaps it's time for some more pictures.

 

Pete.

Edited October 23, 2017 by farnz