My wife recently found an interesting resurface of photographs taken by Brad Pitt of his wife, Angelina Jolie, and their family. The first thing I noticed was the cover shot of Brad holding his Leica. It was in 2008 and the camera looks like a black M-9. The grain, or…
Storm clouds are a great opportunity for photography. I’ve said before that the exposure is key to being a great photographer. Well, storm clouds offer some of those challenges. For starters, the dynamic range inside the cloud is very wide. Where the sun pokes through is extremely bright and easy…
First, forgive me for the pun as you will see. A good friend of mine (and much better photographer) sent me a critique of some recent photos and made some comments that stuck with me. He said that many people today are so caught up in the dynamic range of…
Sometimes you just nail the exposure. I find that when that happens to me, it was really just perfect lighting. Ironically, yesterday I posted about the importance of getting the best possible exposure as the top priority. Today, I went down the Reef Bay trail to some 1,000 year old…
There are several photography quotes I really like. First, “the best camera is the one you have with you” and second, “practice, practice, practice.” There is no doubt in my mind that anyone aspiring to produce great photographs has to practice exposure techniques more than anything else. Learning the physics…
I had two missions – one was to see how my Leica M 28mm ASPH f/2.0 lens looked in black and white film and the second was to see if my out of date black and white film still exposed well. I’ve read in various circles formulas for exposing out…
Pages for Black and White with the Fuji X-Series Settings for Great Black and White with the Fuji X100s – Part I (here) Settings for Great Black and White with the Fuji X100s – Part II UPDATES at the bottom. I keep reading about some great photographers around that have…
The Monochrom is producing black and white images that remind me so much of my days developing silver halide (which I still do, by the way, with a Leica MP). I have also written a variety of posts on how well the Fuji X100s in-camera JPEG’s deliver in terms of…
After a few weeks shooting daily with the Monochrom, I have begun to remember some of the film training I have not used in a number of years. I spent a cloudy morning on the greenway looking for suitable lighting, contrast and subjects. This is some of what I found…
So many times I read reviews of the Monochrom in which the reviewer says that the Monochrom is a niche camera. They are correct, the Monochrom is a niche camera, even in the world of Leica. However, the reasons I see for reviews placing the Monochrom in a niche are…