My Leica M film rangefinder is locked in the past. I bought the analogue rangefinder  on the basis of craftsmanship in the 1970s when it was already  being marginalised  by the innovative, Japanese SLR cameras. In 2022 the film M is technologically  obsolete but it works.  

 I am no True Believer in Leica, its  myths or seductive mystique.  What I currently have  is a well made, vintage  film camera with a minimalist industrial design that requires a considered approach to photographing the world around me.   

 This picture was made in 2021 when I was starting to photographically  explore   the Spring Mount Conservation Park in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.

Spring Mount  is a local stringybark conservation park in the ranges that run alongside the Inman Valley. It  lies  between, and separates,  the Hindmarsh Tiers and  the  Inman Valley.  

Read more

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. 

Read more

This was made whilst I was on a Mallee Routes phototrip in  the Lower Darling region of NSW in 2019. The text on the Wentworth road sign  says,  "How many times have you been cooked out this month"? 

The picture references the traditional Leica aesthetic: quick glimpses of lived life taken with a small, discrete camera.  That 35mm aesthetic of the non-metered all mechanical M  is about simplicity and ease of use with its emphasis on functionality, ergonomics and  the feel in the hand.  This aesthetic was  at a time --the early 1970s--when rangefinder technology was seen by both professional and amateur as an antiquated throw-back with numerous disadvantages. Photographers  had started  to shift to  the Nikon SLR F system with  its excellent but affordable optics. 

I was driving back to the camp at Wentworth after I'd been  photographing the dry river bed of  the Great Darling Anabranch. There was no water in the river.  There is a long term drought in this region,  and most of the water in the river had been extracted by the upstream cotton irrigators. There is little water for the  towns  and properties along the Anabranch and the Lower Darling rivers.   

Read more

This picture was made in March 2018 when  I was walking Wellington, New Zealand,  for a week or so whilst Suzanne was hiking the Grand Traverse in Fiordland over six days. 

The photo was made  just prior to my return trip to Wellington in order to  attend the Photobook/NZ event. At the time I was staying in an Airbnb in the Te Aro Valley whilst I photographed in  Wellington,  and I would walk past the small group of shops in the Te Aro Valley to get to the CBD. 

This poster/flag--I couldn't  tell which from the street -- was in the window of a house  in the main street of Te Aro Valley. I have to admit being rather surprised, puzzled, then taken back to see this support for Trump  in this part of Wellington. 

Read more