Leica Australia have just informed me that the camera body of the  salt water damaged  M4-P rangefinder (circa 1980s) has been repaired and that it is on the way from Wetzlar in Germany to Sydney, Australia.   Sadly, the Leica 50mm Summicron f.2  lens is unrepairable as was the basic Sekonic light meter (a Sekonic L-308 S) that  I'd been using.   I need to buy another 50mm Summicron and,  unfortunately  for me, these  lenses aren't cheap,  even the second hand ones. So it won't be going with me to Japan in October.  

I have missed not using the M4-P (one camera one lens) the last 10 months that it  has been in Germany.  I found the simplicity of the camera (one body, one prime lens) so appealing. The simplicity of the rangefinder is that it reduces the gap between meditative  seeing and the camera's sight. It is a shift towards becoming one with the camera.

I made the above photo  in  the winter of  2022.  It is from one of the 5 rolls of 400 ASA Portra that I'd exposed  prior to  the M4-P becoming  badly damaged. It was the late afternoon  winter light that caught my eye  as I was walking  along one of the various paths in the bushland that were  made by the kangaroos  with Kayla.   

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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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This picture was made early in the morning  whilst walking along Baum Rd in Waitpinga on a poodlewalk with Kayla.

It is  a freeze-frame  of a transient moment   in early spring  that was with a handheld  Leica  M4-P rangefinder and Kodak Portra 400 ASA film.  The picture is an exploration of visual poetics.

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