On friday May 29th, 2009, Mike Johnston posted a suggestion on his site named `The Leica as Teacher‘, in which he proposed that aspiring photographers seeking to improve their skill spend one year shooting with Leica, one lens and one type of B&W film.
My first thought was: “Let somebody else do it”, which is probably what most readers thought. I then realized that someone else doing it wouldn’t be a whole lot of use in making me a better photographer. My next thought was, again like most of the commenters on the post, to change the assignment in small ways. Like most people for instance, I wanted to substitute a camera I already owned. (My mother’s old Olympus Pen FT sprang to mind). Luckily, quite quickly, Mike added a simple paragraph to the original post:
no, it doesn’t have to be a Leica—except if you want to take my advice, in which case it does have to be. Must be, in fact.
At that point I was sold and started browsing Ebay.
This section of my log will chronicle my experiences during these ‘Leica Lessons’.
Note: This post was written shortly after the post on T.O.P., but was in draft for a while as this site wasn’t finished yet.
