Leica

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 1

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 2

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 3

Wheels and Deals – High Level, Alberta – 4

Summer is here.

In the first week of summer break, school’s work has lessened—the last report, comprehensive as it was, has been written and submitted. Students’ award photos have been edited and uploaded, and the division’s long-service award images have been edited and delivered by thumb drive to the appropriate person. Next year, I will use Dropbox to move big images over the Internet. That done, I am able to launch into summer’s rest, time to myself with my thoughts, and begin letting go of the year that has been our school year and bridling down my watch for the next necessary thing needing done. It is time to release all that and take-up my own Life, once again. Movies are being watched – older ones, older favorite’s, and ones linked to novels read. An old pattern is there – movie marathon nights help dissociate me from the year that has been, one part of unlocking the door to summer.

The other day, it was a good thing to wake up, gather my wife from her university work and into our truck, and get out for a drive. It set the tone for a summer’s day. That essential premise – get out the door – was lived out. I got out that door again yesterday, recalling with some strength that there should be a ‘Wheels and Deals’ event at the Mirage Hotel in High Level, Alberta, a ‘Show and Shine’ kind of gathering of favored vehicles with the added opportunity of a swap meet – ‘wouldn’t that be something for me to find a late sixties Pontiac, like the one I used to drive during high school?’ I took my Leica M8 with Zeiss ZM Biogon 28mm lens and went to have a look. I had my Fujifilm GFX 50r and Ricoh GR iii as cameras I might use as well.

I shot for the first hour with the M8, focusing with the rangefinder’s viewfinder and focus patch. I moved through the area as people set up. Cars, trucks and motorcycles arrived and were arranged in the hotel’s parking lot. I could move around, talk with vehicle owners, and photograph vehicles. I could shoot according to what I saw compositionally. I could take my time with the M8. Good.

The black-and-white image presented here highlights some elements of visual composition—the Pontiac and the Buick Super Eight cluster in terms of visual weight in the image, and the black-and-white gradient of tone reveals shape, reflection, and vehicle lines (and an era of automobile design). A sense of depth is there as the eye moves from the Buick, past the Pontiac, to the Mercury truck and the hotel’s entryway. While the image was shot and edited primarily in colour, using Silver Efex from the NiK Collection provided an extraordinary, eye-captivating, black-and-white image – an image captured yesterday, in the summer of 2024, that, in terms of variety and proximity among vehicles, black-and-white toning, visual weight, and proportion, could easily have been an image captured in black-and-white during the fifties when these vehicles were first manufactured. In that sense, the image becomes nostalgic. It relates to a time preceding me … just. Other colour images are presented for reference.

Listening to: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Open All Night,’ ‘Highway Patrolman,’ from the ‘Nebraska’ Album, JD McPherson’s ‘Let the Good Times Roll,’ and most of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Tunnel of Love’ album, starting with ‘Walk Like a Man.’

Quotes to Consider – Re: Photography …

‘Date your cameras, marry your lenses.’ This quote is new to me, yet highlights a key idea for photographers – that investing in glass (good lenses) is essential while the cameras used over time will change.

‘Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work (W. Edwards Deming).’ The quote was offered in a YouTube video offered by ‘Three Blind Men and An Elephant’ in their video, ‘Leica D-Lux 8 Defies Expectations, Including My Own, (2 July 2024)’ to recognize that Leica, as a company already producing stellar cameras, is one whose employees enjoy innovation and improvement that can be made to their cameras and lenses. On the Adizes’ Curve, Leica has embraced a key dynamic that allows them to remain in the ‘prime’ of organizational/corporate lifecycles.

Foothill’s Wheat – Rimbey, Alberta 1

Foothill’s Wheat – Rimbey, Alberta 2

Foothill’s Wheat – Rimbey, Alberta 3

Foothill’s Wheat – Rimbey, Alberta 4

Manning – Canola

Nampa – Grain Truck 1

Nampa – Grain Truck 2

Spruce Grove – Canola

A few days drive from home, I stop my truck … my eyes have found something. I walk this scene, allowing my eyes to question ‘What is it that is here?’ I set camera upon tripod. I look and frame what I see – ‘click.’ Light’s point of origin directs golden light to and around the landscape it is falling upon – ‘click.’ Light’s absence, its shade and shadow and depth – at sunset, shadows are growing long – ‘click.’ My eyes are finding passage of time – ‘click.’ I’ve recognized something in the landscape and quality of light. I am recalling something – ‘click.’ I manage the machine, my camera, working aperture, shutter speed and ISO – ‘click.’ I am exposure bracketing to seven shots at one-step intervals – ‘click, click, click, click, click, click and click.’ HDR shots are possible – ‘click.’ My intent is not only to capture and hold this moment in memory – ‘click.’ It is to recast reality with the image produced – ‘click.’ Wheat fields that blanket rolling foothills are drawing my imagination to this scene – ‘click.’ Appreciation for what I see builds – ‘click.’ A long-ago memory loosens, … ‘click’ … connecting me to what I now see for the first time as an adult – ‘click.’ A sense of something familiar grows – ‘click.’ My mind resides and works equally in another place – ‘click.’ It anticipates the other side of download, edit and image production, ‘Can I bring the edited image produced close to what I now see?’ ‘Click.’ Weeks pass. I make time to edit images. I remove the SD card from my camera and download it onto an external hard drive. A Lightroom edit begins. In the edit, the surprise of the extraordinary occurs; what my eyes and camera captured weeks ago is now re-seen and more fully seen in the image that has been created. Good.

Images – Foothills Wheat Crop, Manning Canola, Nampa Grain Truck and Spruce Grove Canola.

Quote to Consider/Inspire: “Look for LEICA patterns; Look for lines, edges, intersections, contrast and angles in the shapes, light and shadows of the global and local elements of a photo to create a harmonious composition,” John Kosmopoulos.

Listening to: Molly Tuttle & John Mailander’s ‘Another Side, Tell Me,’ ‘Morning Morgantown,’ ‘Moonshiner,’ ‘I’m Over You’ and ‘Red Prairie Dawn;’ Spencer Elliot’s ‘Torque.’