The Covid-10 pandemic made street photography impossible.
Well, unless one wanted to take pictures of empty streets, the past 3 months
have seen no gatherings allowing a street photographer to capture moments of
peoples’ behavior.
And that is good, of course.
However, lately many states in the US have relaxed the rules
regarding celebrations and gatherings. The 4th of July is a special
national holiday and our cowboy town in Arizona allowed its celebration. So, I
put on my mask and took my 1954 Leica IIIF RD with me.
Since there was no parade, my goal was to capture a few
moments that made this 4th of July special.
This photo captures the “attitude” in Prescott
in July 2020. I wanted to have the riding cowboy statue on the right as well as
the flags flapping in the wind on the left. The focus was on the two people
wearing masks while blurring the background showing the crowd. I used a f5.6 aperture
and a 1/100th second shutter speed. Given the strong sun, I was
hoping to get the blurring with the flags movement and the background.
In fact, it did work out that way because I love using FSU
lenses that are still cost friendly and full of unpredictability! Yes, my Leica
came with a Summar lens but I never liked its softness. So the lens I took with
me on this 4th of July is a 1954 Russian Industar. I like the
softness on the edges it provides when open wide.
Ok, no B&W photographer can resist taking a picture of a
spotted Great Dane! Again, I wanted to push the lens as far as I could, so this
is with f3.5 aperture and a shutter speed of 1/75th of a second. The
very blurry but soft and well transitioned bokeh
(background) gives the moment a character of doubt. Perhaps many who were
downtown on this day were indeed still wondering when we may get back to the “good
ol’ days”. So the Grate Dane photo has a 2020 mood.
Finally, this was the first photo I took on July 4th,
early morning when I was walking my dog. The artists’ kiosks were organized around
the town square and this woman was just putting her mannequins out to display
the hats she makes. It was a lonesome moment right after sunrise and I wanted
to have a 4th of July without any crowd. Just this artist and her
mannequins. I think I took this photo with f3.5 and 1/50th second
shutter speed.
… So, these photos have been as much about the 2020 4th
of July as about the Leica I cherish and my experimentation with the FSU lenses.
But need to mention one more thing about the camera – it is
a 1954 Red Dial and timer Leica IIIF with a serial number of 710933. I bought
this many decades ago from a collector who could not sell it at the price he
was hoping for given the small dent under the “Germany” engraving.
What is
special about this camera is that it belongs to only 5000 out of the 180,000
Leica IIIFs because it was made/assembled in Canada rather than in Germany. These models are highly collectible and
according to the Leica archives:
“Only 1000 Leica IIF
ELC/RD serial number 71001 – 711000 were made in Midland, Canada in 1954”
Add a simple Russian designed-made in the Ukraine lens to it
and you never know what surprises will slowly appear in the developing tray
under a red light!
July 5, 2020
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment