My  salt water damaged Leica M4-P is still at the Leica factory in Germany,  either being repaired or still in the queue waiting to be repaired.  I have no idea which it is.  Leica did advise that it would  be repaired and returned to Australia at the end of June. It is now more than eight months. The repair times have blown out, but not to worry. The camera's  value is increasing all the time -- it would be in mint condition and  so worth around  $A4000 dollars. Unfortunately, I need to replace the Summicron 50mm f2 lens as Leica advised  me that my 1980s    damaged Summicron lens was unrepairable. Sad, as it was a good lens. 

In the meantime  I am going through the archives. The two pictures below are from 2020 and they  are details of the ground in the beech forest along  the Kepler Track,   near  the shores of Lake Manapouri in the Fiordland National Park in the South Island of New Zealand. 

There were heaps of people walking the track that day. I was only doing a days walk  as Suzanne had decided to go on a day trip  to Doubtful Sound / Patea.  This beech forest was an all green world,  and it was such a contrast to  an arid South Australia which has no forests.   he photos  were made around  the same time as this picture.

 We were staying at Lake Manapouri at the time. The news was all about the emerging Covid-19 pandermic. We  had started to worry  about whether we would need to cut short our holiday and return to Australia  early.    We were closely  monitoring  the news  for any  policy hints about  Australia closing its borders. We did not want to be stranded in NZ if Australia did close its borders.

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Over time, this minor weblog has evolved  from being  a Leica snapshot blog into one  about visual poetics in photography. Based on using a 1980s  film Leica rangefinder camera  this  approach  stands in contrast to the Leica being associated with, and traditionally used for,  photojournalism and urban street photography in the 20th century.  Recall black-and-white and Henri  Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank  or Lee Friedlander.  

My  equipment is simple: a hand held  Leica  M4-P camera,  a standard Leica 50mm Summicron lens, a basic handheld lightmeter,  and Kodak Portra 400 ASA film  with  the negatives  processed  in C41 by a commercial lab and then scanned by me using a  little Plustek  Opticfilm 8100 scanner. The post processing, which  is done in Adobe  Lightroom  6, is minimal.  It is basic technology with the construction  of the image is done in camera. 

This image of the Balcanoona shearing shed in  the Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park in South Australia when  I was there in the winter of 2021,  is an example of my approach.      

Though I struggle  to make poetic images I  often wondered what poetic photography  means,  or refers to.   People usually say that poetics is the opposite of documentary and that it is a  form of  art photography and so  distinct from photojournalism. That doesn't get us very far since  it just identifies a genre of photography that is deemed to be experimental and  outside the constrictions  and the traditional structures of photography. 

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