[Leica] Getting comfortable w/ you Leica (Redux)

[Matt Kollasch <matthew.kollasch@uni.edu>]

Tristan Tom wrote:

> I am still trying to figure out how to get comfortable with using/carrying my new M6 TTL ...

This thread reminds me of what the narrator (a photographer) in THE
GROUND BENEATH HER FEET by Rushdie has to say about photography.  The
first one is most relevant to the thread.

"The inhibited photographer should set down his camera, I thought, and
never work again." p. 214

"It was easy to be a lazy photographer in Bombay.  It was easy to take
an interesting picture and almost impossible to take a good one."  p.
211

"In my stolen photographs - for the photographer must be a thief, he
must steal instants of other people's time to make his own tiny
eternities - it was this intimacy I sought, the closeness of the living
and the dead."  [Here he is talking about about a theme he called EXITS,
in which he was shooting funerals in India.] p. 212

Quotes from this edition:
Rushdie, Salman.  The ground beneath her feet.  
New York: Picador USA, 2000.  575 pages.  
Originally published in 1999.

I also culled some quotes from Henri Caritier Bresson that are somewhat
relevant to getting comfortable with your camera.

The Mind's Eye : Writings on Photography and Photographers by Henri
Cartier-Bresson,
Aperture, 1999.

"What I am looking looking for, above all else, is to be attentive to
life."

In whatever picture-story we try to do, we are bound to arrive as
intruders. It is essential, therfore to approach the subject tiptoe --
even if the subject is still-life."  
[To me HCB is saying is to simply show some respect for your subject.  I
have found that to be important.  Be open, respectful and as mentioned
earlier on this list... have a theme or objective.  I am going to Chicgo
next week and I plan to shoot, shoot shoot and my theme: smokers. (Could
be my love of film noir?)  They will be huddled outside of the buildings
and I will be there. I plan to have a lighter with me to make sure
everyone is lit up :>)

And one more quote from HCB that is relevant, I am sure, to many of you.
"I had discovered the Leica.  It became the extension of my eye, and I
have never separated from it since I found it.  p 22.

From Iowa where I am slouching toward a Leica, but in the meantime
shooting a Voigtlander Bessa R.  This list is great... I am learning a
lot from its collective wisdom.  Thank you.

/matt kollasch
Cedar Falls, IOWA