My History With Leica

 These were the three best images from a roll of Kentmere 400 shot in my Leica IIIa during a walk in Old Town and a visit to the VM coffee shop and the adjacent vintage sign and vehicle collection.

 My IIIa Leica was a body-only purchase from ebay.  I shot it for a while with Soviet M39 lenses, which was really fine.  Still, I thought it would be nicer to shoot the camera with actual Leica lenses, so I eventually found a good local deal on a IIIc with a 135 Hektor and a 3.5/50 coated Elmar.  I didn't keep the Leica IIIc long because I prefered the simpler construction of the IIIa.  The Hektor telephoto just seemed too awkward in use,  and I ultimately gave it to a friend.

I have made a lot of pictures with the 3.5/50 Elmar over the past six years and it has become a great favorite because of the consistent brilliance of its performance.  

Getting Started

 My first camera was a gift from my family, a Kodak Baby Brownie Special.

 I think that by the time I received that gift I was already enamored by the idea of becoming a photographer.  My next camera, also a gift, was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash.  The first I bought for myself near the end of high school was an Argus C3.

 All of those cameras were perfectly adequate as image makers, though you wouldn't guess that from the pictures I made at the time.  What was lacking in my early efforts was not proper equipment, but rather some guidance from someone with expertise and some teaching skills -- in other words, a mentor.  I'm sure I was in proximity to such a resource many times over the years, but I never really developed the skill of establishing the necessary relationships.

What got me thinking along these lines was an article I came across in the Santa Fe New Mexican about Santa Fe Preparatory School photography teacher Sarah Meghan Lee.  Before she became a darkroom instructor at the school she was a photojournalist and photo workshop leader.  Those credentials are impressive, as also are her comments on photography's history as reported the the article, which by the way was written by one of the school's students.

What an extraordinary opportunity is available to those prep school students! 

Rainy Day

The last of New Mexico's monsoon weather.