The Leica for a Year Project – By Patrick Medd
The Venn diagram describing the readership of 35mmc and of Mike Johnston’s blog ‘The Online Photographer’, may not have a huge amount of overlap—on the other hand it may, I don’t have the data. For those of you not familiar with Mike’s blog you may not know that in 2009 he set his class of eager followers an exercise. The premise is described in an article entitled ‘The Leica as Teacher’ and developed in a further article ‘Why it has to be a Leica’. Put succinctly, it challenges you (the aspiring photographer) to shoot a Leica rangefinder, with one lens and one type of black and white film exclusively for a year. You should aim to shoot two to six rolls of film per week and make one to six work prints per roll, without cropping. Every five to ten rolls make one nice print, again without cropping. The idea was that a year of doing this would radically improve your photographic ability.
