Walking through snow

Snowy view

Come here my boy!

Project Silhouettes

Today, Time Magazine Light Box featured a reflection on the calendar year with a series of 357 photographs of silhouettes. I felt particularly inspired myself by some of them and reviewed my street photography gallery to identify my silhouettes. Over the years, I've shot a considerable number of them but few really managed to stick transcending the moment and the location, whether it will be a mischiveous group of 20-year olds enjoying the late September sunshine at the lake, or the treasured autumnal sunshine of Berlin or the hot summer sun of Frankfurt refreshing from the fountain water, they all come together as a sharp cutout of their everyday reality.

Leica X2 - a small package with big promises

After having the chance to test the X1 (and falling for its compact size, superb optics, and great handle), I was quite curious about the X2 when it hit the market. And sure enough, as I was watching the prices of the X1 drop (in the second-hand market), I thought it will take a while until X2 hit a bit more reasonable price-level that would justify as a back-up camera. But I was lucky with an X2 ebay purchase that was below what I expected (happily) and it came pristine. I fired it up and noticed that indeed a lot of the issues with X1 had been fixed. Being an M9 user, I was impressed with the high ISO performance - I can easily live with the 6400. A slightly faster auto-focus made usage a pleasure (although I still miss the manual focusing from the M when I am out with the X1 as well as the shallowed depth of field which one finds with a 50 lens on the M (my preferred outfit)). Over the past couple of weeks, I also added the electronic view-finder to my accessory options and for me it makes all the difference being used to using a view-finder in most situations (as well as enjoying the flexibility of using the live-view in some situations). A little camera with a certain style and charme and plenty of quality under the hood.