[Leica] Slideshow

[geordiepete211 at yahoo.co.uk (Peter Cheyne)]

Thank you for the encouraging words.  A friend and colleague actually used 
practically the same words as George to describe my photos: "intense energy 
and love of life", so I was surprised to read them again.  It interests me 
how such qualities can be read from someone's photographs.  I've often 
thought about Plato's challenge to the visual arts, namely that they are 
three removes from the reality itself.  As a critique, I think he was right 
that we should challenge ourselves can attempt to get beyond a 2-dimensional 
representation of surfaces to express something living and vibrant that 
invites relation and communication beyond the small flat image itself.  That 
sounds more pretentious in words than in practice, I'm afraid.

I keep my long lenses and SLR kit for wildlife, especially birds.  But my 
job (philosophy teaching in Japan) keeps me very busy, so I find I only have 
the chance to use the long lenses (400mm and 800mm, both f/5.6) a few times 
a year.  Since 9/9/09 I've been thinking about selling all that kit to buy 
an M9.  I'll keep that idea on the back-burner for a while yet.  The appeal 
of selling off SLR kit to buy an M9 is that I find I use my M6 most of the 
time these days and recently I've lost 6 rolls of Kodachrome in the mail.  I 
sent the 6 rolls, which have been in a friend's freezer for 11 years, from 
Japan to Dwayne's.  They had precious photos of a trip to the English Farne 
Islands and Lake District I made this August with my 6 year old daughter.  I 
sent them to Dwayne's early September, and Dwayne's say they still have not 
received them.  I was really looking forward to getting those slides.  I'll 
leave it a bit longer and ask Japan Post if they can find
 the films.  Perhaps the thin brown envelope split and the films are sitting 
in lost property somewhere.

Anyway, I'll get over that and expose some more film with my M6 and hope to 
post some favourites again before too long.