[Leica] LHSA or To Beantown and Back

[TTAbrahams@aol.com]

 We are back after 5 days in the colorful New England. The LHSA meet in 
Boston/Burlington was a blast. I am not one to go to high-school reunions, 
but sometimes I think that the LHSA Annual Meet is somewhat like that. We 
arrived on Wednesday evening and did run into Mark and Karen Rabiner, Richard 
Wasserman, Martin Howard, and Arthur Krick almost immediately. Of course, 
this meant dinner and drinks and after about 5 minutes it was like you have 
never left!
 Thursday was a guided tour of Salem, Gloucester, and Rockport as well as 
points in between. The guide was somewhat dictatorial in her approach and 
reinforced my long held belief that one can't take pictures on a 
"group-tour"! Particularly with the 12/5,6 Voigtlander! Of course, we all did 
anyway and we will be swearing at various LUGgers who now intrude into the 
negative, obscuring the clapboard houses and stuffed witches (and the 
pumpkins; the New England states takes Halloween seriously!). Thursday night 
we all gathered for more dinner, wine, beer, etc. and further discussions 
about Leica, photography and essential subjects like "Why are they only 
serving the REALLY good beef one night and not the next?"
 Friday am another guided tour. Tuulikki and a multitude of LUGgers took off 
for the Revolutionary part of the area while Martin Howard and I boarded Eric 
the Red and went back to some of the places we visited on Thursday, now 
remarkably free of intruding LUGgers.  I felt that I had to go back to the 
LHSA board-meeting at 3 pm so the bus-tour was out. Weather was absolutely 
perfect; warm, blue skies and a light breeze. Many rolls later we ended up in 
Newburyport (on the recommendation of Steven Alexander) and found a healthy 
lunch (Café Latte and a Chocolate Madeleine). Sufficiently wired we 
continued, although now we were forced to shoot at 1/500 to offset coffee 
induced shakes. 
 Friday night was for us one of the highlights of the meet. Magnum's Costa 
Manos lives in Boston and he had invited Peter Choy (of SF), Martin, 
Tuulikki, and me for drinks, dinner and dessert, as well as picture viewing 
and photo-discussions. Martin acted as the driver and navigated Eric The Red 
through the Big Dig and Boston's traffic. I think that the combination of 
Eric's size, the Ohio-plates and Martin's driving skills impressed even the 
Bostonians. 2.5 tonnes of red Lincoln can out-nerve even a Boston cabbie! 
Costa has a small backyard attached to his brownstone and once we got the car 
in there it was unaniousmly concluded that this was the largest object that 
ever visited this back yard. Of course we talked photography, architecture 
and more photography. A friend of Costa's, Charlie brought a box of prints 
and showed those, including a wonderful beginning of a book (I hope) on Elvis 
impersonators!  Costa is of course the absolute master when it comes to 
photography. If you can find "A Greek Portfolio", now reprinted, it is 
well-spent money. He is one of the master printers of all time! We continued 
doing this until very late and then retired to the Burlington Marriott, heads 
spinning with images (ably assisted by wine and Thai beer).
 Saturday morning started  the official part of the meeting; new president 
and board and all that. The rest of the day was the LHSA usual stuff. 
Highlights included Jonathan Eastland's slides of sailing-photography. You 
could feel the saltspray from some of those slides. Michael Hintlian showed a 
presentation of his work on the Big Dig. There is nothing like watching good 
photography to get you challenged and both Jonathan and Michael are in the 
top of their crafts.
To everybody's great disappointment Erwin could not attend the meeting for 
family reasons.
 Saturday night is the LHSA dinner; a rather informal affair (I think it is 
supposed to be formal, but trying to get a couple of hundred LHSA members to 
be formal is not that easy!). Alex Webb from Magnum was the featured 
dinner-speaker and he put on a great slideshow. I am not a color-shooter per 
se, but Alex makes me want to raid the freezer for Kodakchrome and go forth 
and shoot with it! He is one of the few that I know that can show "heat" in 
his pictures. You feel the humidity and the heat radiating from the screen. 
Color at its best!
 Of course, the other long awaited moment was the draw for various prices in 
the LHSA-Raffle. I know that there has been questions on who won the "grand 
prize" and it is with great embarrassment and humility that I admit that I 
did! If I had known this, I would not had to work like a slave on Tuesday 
before departing, to finish the "LHSA Special Edition" Rapidwinder that was 
part of the price-package either! I did however return the Rapidwinder to 
LHSA and it was drawn as a door prize later! As a piece of trivia, my winning 
ticket was purchased on Saturday morning before breakfast. I walked by the 
Leica Registration desk and saw that they still had some tickets available so 
I splurged. 
 Sunday Morning is the LHSA Swap meet. Somebody suggested that we should pipe 
the theme from "Jaws" into the room. It is a feeding frenzy that has to be 
seen. Tuulikki, Richard Wasserman (the Rewind Crank man) and Jonathan had set 
up a table, selling Softreleases, Rapidgrips, Rapidwinders, Rewind Cranks, 
and Leica M6 TTL books (signed) and they had a blast! Tuulikki had a standard 
response to lack of change on twenties "I don't have any tens so you might 
want to buy two Softies instead?". Jonathan claimed that the jet lag and the 
late nights forced him to rethink how to spell his name occasionally and 
Richard explained patiently how the Rewind Crank worked, as well as 
demonstrating how the Rapidgrip/Softie/Rapidwinder combo worked. It was the 
table with the longest line and most laughter!
 We had the great fortune to be able to decompress with a friend of ours. She 
lives in the town of Harvard and we spent Sunday afternoon and evening, 
sitting on the back-deck, overlooking the changing colors of New England, 
eating lobsters, drinking wine, and playing with Ginger (her golden 
retriever) and getting de-LHSA'd. 
 It was one of the most pleasant LHSA meets I have ever attended. The 
membership is changing, there are still some hard-core collectors, but more 
and more it is the user/collector/enthusiast who make up the membership. 
Great kudos goes to Al Wolsky for handling the organisation of the meet and 
to all the LHSA members who put in a lot of hours to make it run smoothly.
 There should be a prize for the bravest person to attend. Stefan Daniel from 
Leica, Solms fielded questions with great aplomb. He also brought along the 
0,58 M6 with the new winder, the 28/2, and my all time favourite, the replica 
Null-series. Now, there is a true Leica, you have to cap the lens while 
advancing film, it has no rangefinder and requires a sharp knife to adjust 
the film for loading. All it needs to be perfect is an Aspherical Anastigmat 
and a matching Rapidwinder!
All right, now we can all start planning to go to Portland, Oregon next year. 
I will have to see if I dare buy the Raffle tickets next year!
All the best,
Tom A

Tom Abrahamsson
Vancouver, BC
Canada
www.rapidwinder.com