Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/02/16

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Younger photographers and Leica rangefinders
From: Leopold Green <ldg@dmu.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 16:35:32 -0000

The below is very sad but I find it to be reflect at my university [De
Montfort, in England] where the Lens Media department appear to be
shifting to digital at a rapid rate...something to do with the perceived
'sexiness' for students, um! However what someone learns at college
rarely provides an overwhelming influence upon the rest of their lives!

On the 'young photographer' line, my interest in photography, only
recently re-awoken took me initially to one of those auto everything
Canon EOS things [with a side helping of PhotoShop], in less than a year
I bought an M6 and shifted to b/w.
I can't help but wonder if others like me [mid 20's to mid 30's - ok I'm
on the mid 30's side of that] whose career involves large quantities of
IT/MIS/Web things, are not likely to be drawn back to the traditional
values the Leica embodies. I know you can turn the machine off with
Canon and Nikon, but that is like saying you can turn the TV off, or not
hop from cable channel to channel, i.e., when something is there it
takes a great effort not to use it and in practice this doesn't always
happen. Sorry to ramble but the pessimism of some posts that say Leica
is only for collectors or 'old timers' or people too caught in emulating
the past seem to miss the point, a Leica is for a style of photography
which emphasises the photographer and their vision and that is as
unlikely to go out of fashion as painting was when faced by photography.

I'll go back to lurking now...


Leopold [who thinks 35 is young!]

	-----Original Message-----
	From:	B. D. Colen [SMTP:bdcolen@earthlink.net]
	Sent:	Tuesday, February 16, 1999 3:06 PM
	To:	leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
	Subject:	RE: [Leica] Younger photographers and Leica
rangefinders

	And speaking of young photographers - my daughter, a sophomore
photo major
	at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts here in beantown,
commented
	yesterday that her color teacher recently told the class that
they comprise
	what is probabaly the "last generation of students" who will be
	learning/doing wet printing ... interesting...