Saturday 1 December 2012

London with a Leica M8

I was recently in London for a couple of days shooting a video interview for a client.
My colleague Simon and I travelled down the day before we were due to shoot and took a look at the William Klein/Daido Moriyama exhibition at the Tate Modern. We were very disapointed. While Klein deserves his reputation as one of the pioneers of street photography I found much of his other output not to my taste and his films unwatcheable due to a combination of poor acting, poor cinematography, poor lighting and dreadful script. The contact paintings were good though. I had not heard of Moriyama before and had, quite frankly, not missed anything. If you like your photos poorly focussed, exposed and in need of a written explaination they Moriyama is the man for you.

The following day after the video shoot we had time to kill before our train back to Leeds. As we are both Leica users we decided to take a look at R. G. Lewis in Holborn as well as York Cameras in Pied Bull Court. On our way there Simon took the opportunity to photograph some advertising cards in a phonebox for a personal project illustrating a poem about London, as he was doing this he was, in turn, photographed by a street photographer, we struckup a conversation and ended up going for a coffee with Zo Flamma-Hill.
Zo's website can be viewed here

Simon and Zo

When we got to R. G. Lewis I was pleased to see that the price of used Leica M8's has not fallen due to the introduction of the Leica M in October!

Tate Modern Leica M8 Summicron 35mm f/2 ASPH

Outside Tate Modern: Leica M8 ISO 640 Elmarit 28mm

Outside Tate Modern: Leica M8 ISO 640 Elmarit 28mm

St Pauls Leica M8 Voigtlander 15mm

Leica M8 ISO 640 Elmarit 28mm

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