[Leica] Ulf's comments

[Alastair Firkin <firkin@netconnect.com.au>]

ULF SJÖGREN wrote to me on my home page, and I thought the discussion of
photo philosophy might entertain in the sea of red dots ;-)
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As I wrote in the previous mail I do like your  pictures from NO. some more
than others (of course). Light, technique and  motives or good, in some
pictures excellent. But after a while I found something  that made me
wonder...... In many  pictures you are too distant >from the  interesting
part of the picture. You haven't followed the old rule "one  step closer".
And now I wonder (as I have noticed this in my own nowadays  very few 35mm
pictures). Is this what happens when you change from medium format  camera
to 35 mm???. I mean you are used to the bigger focusing screen, and -what
I think is the most important fact - longer lenses and another fact is  the
relations between width and heght. 1:1 or 3:4 IS different from 2:3. Look
at yor pictures with "square  eyes".and then tell me your opinion. Kindest
regards Ulf Sjögren swe.
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This is great. I really love critics. Now your comments that I'm not in
close enough are interesting, as it is a long time critisism of my own.
I've tried to be "better" at taking one step closer, and chatting to
locals. In this respect, I think I have succeeded with the woman and her
dog on the cafe seats, the boy with the pig, the bar scene [with out
intruding] the parrot and cocky etc. The night painter was taken to have
the blurred people leaving the image, and deliberately further away and the
buskers were taken with a 21, so I was almost sitting in their laps. The
smokers in pink - well this was the best I could do and yes I wish I could
have got in closer on the 4 girls hamming it up on Bourbon St, but I had to
grab the shot as fast as possible. Maybe they would have posed for me --- I
should have tried. In reality you can never be in close enough. These
images are the whole negative/slide except for the 4 girls [slightly
cropped], and in part reflect the use of a rangefinder. The framing is not
as important as the "decisive moment" for me, especially when I'm using the
rangefinder. My people shots with the Rollei TLR are also pretty close [see
the Egypt shots at the Rollei TLR club
http://www2.magicalights.co.jp/dmakos/rolleitlr/index.html

but that was 1994, and I would have tried to get in closer there as well
now. Yes you can never be too close, but I think the M6 Leica is the best
way to get in there, with all SLR's, I find the tendency to use a longer
lens, especially with the noise of a Hasselblad. The M6 has an intimacy
with the 35mm lens even if it does distort a little for a portrait. In this
respect, I like the proximity that one feels in the portrait and yet the
sense of background and place. Here I love using the superwides for some of
my portraits: the 21 with the M6, the Rolleiwide, the 30 fisheye with the
Hasselblad, and the 15 superelmar with the R8.

As for going from square to oblong format, I believe there is quite an
adjustment to make. I like the neutrality of the square, but many people
"hate" it. 35mm for me is better often in a vertical format and yet
displaying vertical images is harder especially on the www. The new
panorama images of the X-pan provided and even greater challenge in format
switching, but one I've really enjoyed. As I state in my review of the
X-Pan however, it is far too slow to ever replace the M6 as the rangefinder
of choice in that decisive moment ;-)

Cheers

Alastair Firkin

http://users.netconnect.com.au/~firkin/AGFhmpg.html