Thoughtfactory: Leica poetics

Leica, film, snaps, chronicles, cliches

Posts for Tag: seaweed

analogue nostalgia

The pictures below and over the page were made in 2021 whilst Maleko and I were on an afternoon  poodlewalk in  the littoral zone in Waitpinga in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of  South Australia. We often walk along this section of the coast in the late afternoon. Photographically speaking, this littoral zone  works best in low or flat sunlight. It is no good in the bright afternoon sunlight of summer.

The pictures were made  with  my Leica M4-P with a  rigid Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. As mentioned in an earlier post the rangefinder  recently became salt damaged from a rogue wave surging over me whilst I was photographing.  Leica  in Germany have since informed me that the lens is kaput (ie.,  unrepairable), but that they can repair the camera body.   I have given the go ahead  to repair the camera and  I am hoping that the insurance will cover most of the cost of buying a second hand Summicron 50mm pre-asph lens. 

That decision means that I remain committed to what some call vintage photography that many understand in terms of being wrapped up in nostalgia. Though not born into a digital world, but subsequently embracing it, I accept that I am  a nostalgic photographer whose optimistic  belief in the digital future is becoming outmoded.  What then is analogue nostalgia? 

Leica v AI

The two  pictures below was made whilst I was on a poodlewalk in my local coastal area along  the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. They were  both made  with a 1970s handheld Leica rangefinder with Kodak Portra 400  ASA film. Its  bare bones  photography. The film  was then processed in a commercial lab and the negatives were  scanned to create a digital file (jpeg).  

This classical and hybrid approach to the photographic  is in marked contrast to the AI and computation that has entered the aesthetic realm in the second decade of the 20th century.  Aesthetic machines such as Midjourney's Discord server  can generate images that appear to be human made.  This  AI imaging is a machine-learning system, and it's  software enables you to create images that look like photographs, oil paintings, cartoons, etc. You can leave your expensive  camera in the cupboard. 

seaweed still life

This  still life of seaweed and granite  rocks was made on an early morning  poodlewalk:

It was made just before I went on a camel trek in the northern Flinders Ranges.