Picture it! Cullowhee 2005. I was amidst my second year in college. It was also at this time that I was rediscovering my joy for photography. Going to school in the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina provided me with a magnitude of inspiration and splendor; and I wanted to capture it all. I borrowed my …
Once again my neighbor has loaned me a camera, in this case a Leicaflex SL that he bought second-hand in the 90’s for about 200 EUR and subsequently used for several years. In loaning me this camera, Alvar has given me the opportunity to try it as well as writing a new article for 35mmc, and for that I am really appreciative.
For Christmas this past year, my wife bought me a second hand Leica R3 body. These are somewhat common and affordable as they are not the Leica Rangefinder film body the world has come to love; rather they are the early SLR’s made by the company in the 70’s. Specifically, the Leica R3 was made in 1976 at the Leitz production facility in Portugal.
Floating seven miles off the south coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is an island called Martha’s Vineyard. Steven Spielberg used the sprawling beaches and quaint villages there as a living set to bring Jaws’ Amity Island to screen. Like the insatiable shark in that scary fish flick, Martha’s Vineyard’s Chamber of Commerce is similarly monstrous in its pursuit of tourists’ dollars. During the summer months, the year-round resident population of just 16,500 swells spectacularly to more than 100,000 souls, and it’s amongst these roiling masses that I found myself last Fourth of July, with a Leica R6.2 in hand.
My name is Markus. I come from a small town in the south of Germany and from my early twenties, I have been seriously into photography. I shoot mostly people, mostly nudes, and mostly on film. Obviously, this post isn’t about my photography. I live, unfortunately, relatively close to the university town of Tübingen, where after my studies I spent the next 8 years as a happy resident. I say unfortunately because this town is home to one of the finest camera shops I have ever seen: Foto Walter. Now this shop got me back into photography more times than I can count, and it also has the best used gear collection from a Leica enthusiast’s point of view that I know.
