Well it’s been a pretty miserable 12 months (covid), but I’m putting that behind me now. Here we are with a new blog, a new camera, a new beginning.

About a week ago I borrowed and subsequently bought a Leica M10 Monochrom with 35mm 1.4 Summilux-FLE lens. I say bought, I actually traded it for my Hasselblad 907X with 80mm 1.9 lens. I had a week to decide whether the camera was for me. The day I received the M10M I immediately took it into town, but when I got home to review the images, a mess of grey tones, I deleted them all – I did not sleep well that night, though it seems silly to tell you now that I was stressing over a camera.

I wanted the M10M for it’s high ISO ability, since I often convert images of live music and street to black and white I wasn’t put off by losing out on colour, but I don’t really ‘shoot for black and white’.

The next day I tried again, I took the camera to a local nature reserve and thought a lot more about the images I was creating, what would actually look good in black and white. It was an overcast day so I looked for contrasted scenes – light on dark, or dark on light – it was a more fruitful outing and I was started to get more excited about the new creative processes.

When I got home my wife, Louise, offered to model for me. She wanted an image for her new website, she is soon to take on the title of ‘author’ (yay!). I used an orange filter here because I thought it would help increase contrasts that make the skin stand out, what I actually learnt is that the yellow walls ended up the same shade of grey as the skin – learning is great.

I then took Louise around the house, and exercised a bit more creativity moving from room to room looking for the light. I had fun, I was elated, it reminded me of what life was like before lockdown. The M10M was there with me for this experience and so we bonded, and it was at this time I knew I wanted to keep the camera. I had a much better sleep that night.

Here’s a selection from our session.