A decade ago, we brought Dad back to Edmonton, Alberta, from his retirement in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, and found him a venue for assisted care/living close to family. Alzheimer’s Disease had its hold on him, and my brothers and I witnessed the decline of Dad’s physical and cognitive abilities through to end-of-life. Managing short-term memory day-to-day grew difficult for him. Long-term memory, though, found him a resource for family histories. Playing the piano had always been a source of joy for Dad. At the piano, in these later years, he could find his way to the music of his youth and that which he enjoyed on his 1964 Heintzman piano through our family years. In Edmonton, the expressive side of Dad’s language diminished, yet we could interact with him through the yes-and-no nods and shaking of his head to help him establish certainty in his communication. As school began in September 2016, we lost him. He’d lived eighty-three years.

We found time, my brothers and I, to disburse Mom and Dad’s belongings among the family – furniture, paintings, photos, China, and personal effects … items that, in their use, would draw out memories of Mom and Dad. One item that came to me was a 1956 Red Dial Leica If camera. While growing up at home, with all my father photographed, of his and mom’s travels abroad, of our family on vacation, of times with extended family and with his time downstairs in his darkroom, Dad had not told me about this camera and the role it played early on in his career.

As far as I knew, my father used Canon cameras, a Canon F-1 and Canon AE-1, during our school years. Before I was born, he made photographs using a Yashica Twin Lens Reflex camera, a medium format film camera, and a handheld light meter. As a research chemist, my father used the 1956 Red Dial Leica If camera to determine and maintain the quality of the product the company produced. The camera was gifted to him in retirement to remember the place and people he worked with when he transferred with his company to Toronto in the mid-eighties. One of my brothers had talked to Dad about the camera and shared the story of its use with me.

The 1956 Red Dial Leica If camera is a rangefinder, a version of the Leica IIIf series without a viewfinder or rangefinder incorporated into its body nor with the ability to work at slow speeds. It uses 35 mm film. The camera measures 5.35 inches by 1.54 inches by 2.60 inches. The body has black leatherette skin, aluminum with chrome plated brass top plate, base plate and knobs. It has two hot shoes to allow the use of an external viewfinder and rangefinder. Where the camera, as produced, was intended for use with an Elmar 50 mm f/3.5 lens, the lens on this camera is a post-war Russian Jupiter 50 mm f/2 lens (a lens not comparable with the Elmar) and not used for regular photography. The Leica If is thinner than today’s cameras. Its weight, though not weighty conveys gravitas – you have a serious piece of photographic equipment in your hands.

Microscope and Adapter – The red velvet Leica camera box contains a camera manual and a manual for an adapter, a MIKAS Micro Attachment for the Leica. With the adapter, the camera can be attached to a microscope directly. The Micro Attachment adapter attaches to the camera’s lens mount and to the microscope. It provides an eye-piece/viewfinder midway along the adapter at an angle perpendicular to the microscope’s eyepiece tube for establishing focus. Making exposures involves calculating settings, trial and error and managing the microscope’s light source. The image produced is called a ‘photomicrograph.’ Placing the camera’s production year into Dad’s career timeline, he would likely have been working in Edmonton, and documents for the camera indicate it being sold in 1957-58.

Looking back to who my father was, I can readily associate a Leica camera with him – a Canadian student from the Maritimes who, at the age of 24, had earned a Ph.D. from a London university in the United Kingdom, a pioneer in organic chemistry on the world stage. He was good at what he did. Leica was quality. So was Dad.

Leica Cameras & The Candid Frame

My first significant consideration of Leica cameras occurred listening to a 5 October 2014 podcast, ‘The Candid Frame – with Ibarionex Perello,’ in which Ralph Gibson was interviewed (The Candid Frame #252 – Ralph Gibson). Dorothea Lange and points of departure were considered. A book Gibson had worked on called ‘The Somnambulist’ was discussed. Gibson discussed a kind of visual literacy that involves not only the content of an image but the visual narrative of the image juxtaposed with other images and in terms of an image among images in sequence. In other talks, Gibson would discuss the proportion of the page in which an image rests as influencing and shaping its visual narrative. Gibson shot with Leica film cameras. In his early post-Navy years, Gibson sometimes pawned one or two of his Leicas to make ends meet. Gibson’s later presentations would consider photography an act of perception, a matter of being present in the situation and to what is photographed. In a broader sense, photography for Gibson is a mindfulness or meditative practice. The range of understanding Gibson brings to photography is extraordinary and captivates – you recognize ‘this is what photography is about.’ Gibson remains a photographer who uses Leica cameras.

“Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It’s a way of Life (Henri Cartier-Bresson).”

Gratitude – I am indebted to Ibarionex Perello and his podcast, ‘The Candid Frame,’ for the over eight hundred interviews he has conducted with photographers and their take on what photography is about. Listening to these podcasts while cycling, walking, and driving has been part of my development as a photographer.

10,000 Hours & Photography

With the extremes of cold northern Alberta winters, my exercise game plan involved getting on an inclined treadmill for an hour each morning before getting to school. I set up a basement treadmill area so that with a minimum of noise, I could gather the full-body exercise of walking on the treadmill while watching television and listening to its audio feed through earbuds or headphones. All this occurred in the wee early morning hours while the household slept.

“Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest (Paul Newman/Interview with James Grissom/1993/Photograph by CW Braun).”

Considering the ‘ten-thousand-hour’ rule suggested by Malcolm Gladwell, that ten-thousand hours of appropriately guided practice would allow the learner to achieve a level of proficiency that would rival that of a professional, I directed my treadmill television watching toward photography. I explored what YouTube offered. I found photographers who used YouTube to share the immediacy of their photography experiences and who used YouTube to generate viewer interest in the photography workshops they led. Adam Gibbs (Quiet Light Photography), Gavin Hardcastle (Fototripper), Nigel Danson, Sean Tucker, and Thomas Heaton became mentor photographers with whom I began my ten-thousand hours of guided photography practice.

“Habit and imitation – there is nothing more perennial in us than these two. They are the source of all working, and all apprenticeship, of all practice and all learning, in this world (Thomas Carlyle).”

The ‘just-like-me’ impact of these videos was surprising. Within a landscape photo shoot, the Lowepro camera bag on the ground that Thomas Heaton was opening up was one I was using. The Canon 5D Mk III camera he put on a tripod was one I used. His Canon 70-200 mm, f/2.8 lens was a lens I used. In weekly videos, Thomas talked through image-making as he made images. Watching the videos, I encountered a photographer who was personable, fallible and a photographer keenly interested in his craft and landscapes around the world. Travel, hiking, camping, exploring various landscapes, image capture, image editing and image printing were the mainstays of his videos. I began to see what was possible in landscape photography and was developing an understanding of choices that can be made when making photographs. The breadth of what photography can achieve became more doable and within reach.

“Apprenticeship is all about being tutored by those who have trod the path we desire to tread (Vincent Okay Nwachukwu).”

Paul C. Smith is a self-taught photographer who has a great sense of composition, colour, and light. He believes that a photograph is the result of seeing context, proportion, balance, and placement. To enhance colour, textures, tone, and mood in his pictures, he chooses his Leica M8 camera, which gives his photos a stunning, filmic look. For black-and-white images, he uses his Leica M6 film camera as it presents tone and mood differently. While he uses his Leica M9 camera, it does not get as much use as the M8. ‘Heart’ is another essential ingredient that produces treasure in his images. When someone takes in his photos, they become privy to his response to the subject and scene, and they can consider the beauty and moment captured in his photos. For Paul, a photograph, if done well, is ‘a stolen moment.’

“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective (Irving Penn).”

“Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them (Carl Jung).”

Leica M8

In the summer of 2018, I visited The Camera Store in Calgary to check out new and old cameras before returning home. While there, I noticed two used Leica M8 camera bodies on consignment. I was intrigued by the possibility of trying out the Leica M8 to see if it could help me improve my photography skills and compare my results with those of a fellow photographer who used the same camera. However, the essential question was whether I could make the Leica M8 work for me and produce the photos I wanted. I decided not to buy the camera as I was unprepared to make such a purchase and needed to rationalize such spending. It was a year later when I purchased the remaining Leica M8 with a Leica Summarit 35 mm lens. I learned to operate the camera by taking photos during the drive home. Once I got home, I ordered a battery charger from the Leica store in Miami, Florida and a few years later a new battery from B&H Photo. I also updated the firmware for the Leica M8. Later, I would add a Zeiss 28mm 2.8 ZM Biogon lens and a fifty-year-old Ernst Leitz Wetzlar Elmar 90 mm lens.

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage (Anais Nin).”

A season of learning began, making photos whenever possible with the M8. The camera helps slow down image-making. I work in aperture priority mode and select an f/stop based on my intention for the photo. Images are composed within the viewfinder frame lines and then the rangefinder focus patch must be aligned to the image within the viewfinder to achieve focus. Once aligned, pressing the shutter button captures the image. This process promotes consideration of composition, lighting, and positioning with respect to the subject. Each element adds to the creation of a well-thought-out image. The resulting ten-megapixel photos are extraordinary.

Operational Fix – Leica M8

While old Leica M8 batteries can be charged, weak batteries can cause operational issues and issues writing images to an SD card.  I thought my Leica M8 had died two years ago – the menu would not hold settings; photos, once taken, would not write to the SD card. My research on what I encountered took months, and finally surfaced a recommendation to replace older batteries with new ones as a solution.  Because I enjoyed working with this camera, I gave it a go and purchased a new Leica Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery (Leica 14464) from B&H Photo.  The new battery restored all camera functions and full camera use.

Picture, Story, Photographer

In October 2022, Paul C. Smith produced a video entitled, ‘Cameras Are My Clickbait.’ Responding to a viewer’s question about the cameras he used, Paul spoke about his early YouTube work and having produced videos that few people viewed. He began making videos highlighting photography, the photographer and the camera used. The cameras were older, used, high-end cameras. Gear talk tended toward the trial-and-error process of mastering the camera’s use to create a photograph. Such discussion concerned what impressed him about the picture produced on the other side of picture-making with the camera. Of the cameras used – Olympus, Leica, Hasselblad and others – the Leica M8 was his first choice.

Good photographers will affirm a core truth Paul draws attention to – “Photography is about the picture, the story behind the photo and the photographer. The equipment is not that important – a camera is a camera.” A Frames Magazine podcast with photographer Walid Azami presented a few weeks after Paul’s video (November 2022) echoes the matter of equivalency of gear and takes the discussion Paul offered a step further … ‘[You] either have a Sony, a Fuji, a Canon, a Nikon, or a Hasselblad and … it comes down to a couple of other brands too. That’s it. … [We] all … have the same gear … [What] makes you … stand out is [that] you have to have opinions.’ While Walid asserts that what separates one photographer from other photographers is your opinion, he would likely agree that ‘opinion,’ as he refers to it, comes down to the photographer’s way of seeing and that one’s ‘way of seeing,’ ‘one’s opinion’ is the embodiment of ‘style.’ This part of the photographer’s photo-making adds to the image’s narrative and the photograph produced.

Along Those 10,000 Hours

Ten-thousand hours of appropriate, guided practice seems longish to me now.  One hour a day for one year yields a minute step forward to the ten thousand hours Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book, ‘Outliers.’ In terms of photography, it is not only about being mentored by a photographer. The praxis part of photography must be dialed into the equation – the time in play with the camera in hand, solving problems and making photos. It is the getting out to photograph, taking time to consider intention, making many photographs, sitting down at the computer editing and working out the presentation of photos by way of the printer, photobook or a photoblog such as this.  It’s also about encountering the good, bad and unintended consequences of making and presenting photos along the way.  It is about learning to see and recognize where an image lies (often right in front of you) and recognizing opportunity. Sometimes it’s the photo waiting for you as you drive by, and you need to make an active choice: stop, turn around, go back, see the scene, walk the scene, and gather not just one photograph but several.  In many ways, it is about mastering yourself so that you have the discipline to go back, see all that is there and take the next step in taking the photo. A photo mentor steps in as you choose along the way – you witness the work of others, you take a workshop, you read books that develop your understanding of photography (e.g., Susan Sontag – ‘On Photography), you listen to podcasts, you find your way to talking through photographs with other photographers, friends and family, and you encounter moments that surprise you when the understanding and doing of photography coalesce in pictures you produce. Your photography becomes about the images you make, the stories behind your photographs, and you as a photographer. I am a long way into my ten-thousand hours and perhaps closing in on meeting its threshold. But there will always be something more to consider, learn, and evolve into practice. Right?

“One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and on. It’s on all the time. (Annie Leibovitz).”

Listening to:  Hollow Coves’ ‘Pictures,’ Roo Panes’ ‘Message to Myself,’ JD McPherson’s ‘Dimes for Nickels,’ The New Customs’ ‘Chasing Light,’ Liz Longley’s ‘Unraveling,’ John McCutcheon’s take on ‘Turn, Turn, Turn,’ Dougie Maclean’s ‘The Osprey,’ and Galen Huckins Glacier Quartet’s ‘The Kennicott.’