Leica IIIF: Week One

A camera that reminds me of engineering tools from a time when the world that was not catered by China.

A tree with no name

Before me there must have been at least other admirers who must have seen this tree, standing at the corner where the road turns into a relatively flat run, after about two thousand feet climb in the last five miles or so. But I have done it many times and even filmed a timelapse sequence at this location many years ago.

It was early in the year, the ground was several inches below a blanket of hardened and yet spongy snow that had accumulated over months. The afternoon sun was low to the horizon and the light reflecting off the snow in the background shone through the branches of the tree hurting my eyes. It was a weekend day but we were far out of reach from the ugly west beyond the mountains. I stood there in absolute silence gazing at the silhouette of the tree and thought about how I could meter this scene right. I had Kodak Tri-X in my Leica M-A: a bare-bones camera that I love the most of all my shooting tools and an orange filter to cut through the blue sky.

It was a bright day: Sunny 16 rule tells me I should set 1/400 sec shutter speed to f/16 aperture, less two stops to compensate the orange filter. But it would have underexposed the tree, the details in the bark. I took a spot meter reading on the main trunk dead center and it read 1/60 seconds at f/16 aperture. Applying zone system math to it, I decided to put the 1/60th sec reading at Zone IV(average dark foliage) and fired the shutter set to 1/125 seconds.

Kodak Tri-X 400, Leica M-A, Voigtlander 50 Nokton f/1, Tiffen Orange 21 filter

City of dreams

A strategic guard post to the Puget Sound, an unfulfilled dream about becoming the biggest sea port on the Pacific coast of America.

One dead leaf on a branch

A dead leaf from a tree in the maple family caught on a branch of a crab apple tree.

First day of February

A Saturday afternoon in Kodak TMax 400, shot with Mamiya 645E

Sea stack and sun flare

One would find amazing work in photography and paintings of sunset over Haystack Rock in Canon Beach, Oregon. But what stuck in my mind the most, even before visiting this place the first time two decades ago was monochrome photographs from the turn of the century I found while researching on the history. Now I know this is not the first time anyone has thought and executed this before but by fat the years I have visited and photographed these sea stacks I have never been satisfied with the results until now.

This is not an analog photography propaganda, I am just thrilled that I have created something special.

Twelve frames - Port Townsend

A winter weekend day trip to Port Townsend, Washington: Back to where I had shot some of the first rolls of film.

Kodak 400 TMax through my Leica M-A + Voigtlander Nokton 50/1 + Tiffen Orange 21 filter

In half frames

Seattle in half frames - shot on Kodak 400TX with a Pentax 17

An unusually foggy day

Burrowing through a sea of dense fog over snow covered dirt with visibility limited to a couple of tends of feet ahead of my truck I arrived at this intersection of farm roads on the US 2 plateau where a presumably abandoned house with a group of trees stood about a hundred feet from me. The fog was so thick I could not spot where the sky met the ground, I was determined to take this photograph.

On the way in it was raining and I was racing against time, for I have to cross the mountains before it gets too dark and icy. The fog was not going anywhere but was loosing light very quickly. So I took out my trusty digital camera and took two shots, and drove away soon after. The house faded away in the rearview mirror very quickly.

End of 2024

I am no stranger to using color filters when shooting black and white film but among all available options, orange was the spectrum I had not thought of picking up before. While I am not a fan of cooling/blue and green filters (because I like my sky and trees dark) I wasn’t sure if I’d love the deep contrast look from orange, since a yellow filter did pretty good job at it.

I did no research, just jumped the gun and bought an orange filter from Amazon, slapped it on to my Voigtlander 50 f/1 Nokton on my Leica M-A and packed this for our EoY trip to Vancouver Island. Over six days on the island shot a roll of Kodak 400 TMax, metering to ISO 320 and the “look” right off the shelf - came out very satisfying.

Trains and mid-century facades

A winter day trip to Seattle, captured on film.

Thanksgiving week

Mostly far away from the chaos and traffic

Joshua Tree National Park, FujiColor 100 (Japan)

A tale of 5 days: Shooting BW film in PNW fall weather

I have never documented the behind the scenes narrative of a full roll of film before so thought I’d give it a try…

November although started off dry has been really wet and stormy over the past two weeks. This is a story of five days spread across the weeks of stormy weather and my attempt at finding new things to shoot.

Day One: Six mile walk

Hugging on the north side of the lake, a ~6 miles walk under moving rain clouds. The first half of the walk was in dry weather but to my surprise, I took more keeper shots in the walk back when it had started raining and presented with limited opportunities to think/compose or even slow down.

Day Two: A coffee shop

Dropped my truck at the shop for oil change, had an hour to kill. We walked around the neighborhood and found a bullet-ridden RV parked in the ditch next to the arterial road where the truck shop is. Yes, I took 2-3 photographs of the seemingly abandoned RV but I didn’t like any of them. Then found a new coffee shop where we sat for the next hour in wait, this red British public call booth was placed outside its entrance.

Day Three: The Puget Sound

November sunsets in Western Washington are before 5 pm and add overcast weather to it, gets dark fairly quickly after 3 pm. This means one could take long exposures early on in the evening, therefore I took the opportunity to take a few photographs of the waves, with a tripod to allow longer exposures.

Day Four: Night Photography

Taking the long exposures fun further, ventured into Anacortes, Washington late night when the streets are free of cars and people.

Day Five: Whidbey Island

For the final images in the roll, we drove out to Whidbey Island. Although the day started with bitter cold and sideway blowing rain in the wind, the weather started to clear out near sunset. It was getting dark fast but I was able to shoot handheld for at least 30 minutes before having the need to pull out the tripod.

Fall colors of Denmark & South Sweden (Kodak E100)

The second roll of slide film I’ve ever shot and this time I added a Tiffen 812 warming filter.

Last day of the trip: Copenhagen

Walking around the city with my Leica loaded with a roll of Ilford FP4 Plus, when the jet lag has weaned off but I am ready to fly home weary of the week living out of a hotel room and without a car.

Fifteen years ago I’d have not guessed how American I am.

This time of the year Copenhagen is unobviously warmer than Seattle and pair that with ~10 miles of walk a day, couple of beers at lunch hour and a warm winter jacket could make one uncomfortably warm. Given that this is not the business tourist season in Scandinavia, I was on the hunt for opportunities to photograph daily life.

This was not the first time we were in Copenhagen and hopefully not the last time either. I love this city: if there is a place in the old world or east of the Atlantic that I feel at home, that would this region - the islands and landmass around the strait of Øresund.

The Upper Cascades

A familiar route for a sunny Saturday roadtrip…

Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up some film in your best camera and shoot like a bastard - a slightly modified quote but relevant to the mood in these photographs.

Eastern Washington in early Fall: From wet mountain slopes to arid canyons

Driving east on Interstate 90 past Snoqualmie Pass brings you to the “other side” of Washington I find relatively prettier than the rainforests and the evergreens to the west. Home is where the heart is but home - western Washington, being more accessible round the year presents less interesting and less exotic subjects to me for creating photographs. The Fall season is about to peak in Washington but the foliage was starting to turn yellow and orange around high elevations, so I embarked on a solo road trip last weekend to capture the early season on film as well as digital photographs.

The terrain changes very quickly after driving down the east slopes of the Cascades, from mountain side consisting of densely distributed streams and creeks flanked by perennial trees to gentle hills covered with sagebrush and farm animals. Signs of fall quickly changes to either late summer or early winter, for there is no distinct fall season in these parts.

Many hours fast forward - a sunset and a moonless night sky. The wind stopped briefly for the sunset before changing direction and get colder in absence of the sun.

This was not the first time I have been to these locations and likely not going to be my last trip. With every year adding more photographs of familiar locations the timeline starts to blur and makes it difficult to place a timestamp on a photograph. But there will always be a special place in my heart for these mountains and the wide open land beyond them, not too far from my home.

Pike Place in Ektar 100

Seattle Center in Kodak Portra 400

Beautiful spring day in the city.

Soviet made LOMO Lubitel-166

A Lubitel-166 Universal made in the USSR in the 80’s - I bought this camera from an Amazon seller from Ukraine in 2022, it took months to get it delivered after transit delays (due to the war in Ukraine). Once I received the unit, didn’t shoot with it until now. I had put a roll of Ilford Delta 3200 in it many months ago to get my father-in-law into analog photography but he couldn’t find time to shoot. After kicking off my home film developing workflow I was hungry for exposed film to put in the tank to develop therefore, I finally took the TLR camera out.

There are no light leaks, I am particularly impressed with the sharpness of the images, especially since I was guessing focus over a somewhat broken focussing system.