Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/02/19

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Subject: [Leica] Shan State - Burma Book Project: M9+Summicron-35v4
From: mitcha at mac.com (mitcha at mac.com)
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2014 04:54:04 +0100
References: <D3A64812-360D-4FAE-ADBC-659FC76C8B51@mac.com> <0B26463600E1425E9631BACF37CB3CE4@Family>

Douglas, thanks. Not sure whether you?re raising the issue whether this 
project would have been better in B&W than in color. No doubt in my mind 
that this had to be in color. Although there are some sunshine shots in this 
series, most of the time the sky was heavily overcast with a very low cloud 
ceiling creating light similar to that after a rainstorm, in which, whether 
you?re shooting film or digital, colors become clear and heavily saturated ? 
this helped a certain type of expression about the situation in the Shan 
State. A B&W essay would have depicted other things and, I supposed, would 
have required a longer stay than was possible on this trip. If you?re 
interested you can see another book project, Bangkok Hysteria, which is shot 
in B&W: http://bit.ly/LV6LiK

In any case, shooting with a M9-P and an M-Monochrom, I generally don?t 
switch between color and B&W constantly or frequently, but tend to alternate 
between the two in ?binges,? and have just started shooting B&W again after 
some six months of color. 

?Mitch/Paris



On Feb 19, 2014, at 4:07 PM, Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:

> Some good engagement amidst all the colours. Who needs B&W for people?
> :-)
> Douglas
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <mitcha at mac.com>
> To: <lug at leica-users.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 7:04 AM
> Subject: [Leica] Shan State - Burma Book Project: M9+Summicron-35v4
> 
> 
> Last month I was in the Shan State in Burma and have put together a book 
> project  of some 80 pictures, called "Chiang Tung Days," that you can 
> download in the form of a 56 MB pdf file by clicking here:
> 
> http://bit.ly/1asgee0
> 
> All of the photos were taken with the Summicron-35v4, whose rendering I 
> like ? this was the first time that I've shot with it in color on the M9. 
> While in recent years I have preferred the 28mm focal length to 35mm, in 
> the markets of the Shan State towns I visited there was so much 
> congestion, so many people in narrow paths or walkways, that I quickly 
> found that, by having to shoot closer up with the 28mm (as I usually do), 
> there is so much going on in the frame that the photographer cannot keep 
> track of it all when trying "to make sense of a complex scene," because 
> one has to see things both to the left and the right at the same, and the 
> angle of view to the edges is just too wide to make sense of the scene ? I 
> mean not looking through the viewfinder but looking at the scene before 
> bringing the camera up to your face. Using the 35mm lens solved all that.
> 
> ?Mitch/Paris
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
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In reply to: Message from mitcha at mac.com (mitcha at mac.com) ([Leica] Shan State - Burma Book Project: M9+Summicron-35v4)
Message from imra at iol.ie (Douglas Barry) ([Leica] Shan State - Burma Book Project: M9+Summicron-35v4)