With the Leica Akademie in Morocco-Part 3

 A surprise of the tour was the day spent in Asilah , a small fishing port, about 50 kms south of Tangier.

It is a delightful old, and very well preserved, walled town with what looks like a still thriving fishing community.

When we arrived it was agreed that we would meet at the drop off point in 90 mins and many of the group, including me, opted to walk around the harbour area. 

 Now usually confronted with this situation, on say holiday, I would walk down to the harbour and find a couple of obvious photo opportunities, and then go and find a coffee. 

The circumstances this time forced me to find photos by looking hard and I surprised myself with the results below.

 After the harbour I walked into the old town and up on to the town walls where I spotted these two photos.

 More photos from the day in Asilah to follow in Part 4.

 

With the Leica Akademie in Morocco-Part 2

 Here's the second batch of my photos from my recent time in Morocco with Leica Akademie Australia.

As with the first batch these were all taken in Tangier. Along with most of the other participants I flew into Casablanca, Morocco's biggest city, and then took the high speed train for the 293 km journey to Tangier.

I really liked Tangier. It has a great cosmoplitan vibe. The old city and medina is large and still authentic. It was a great place to start the photo tour. 

A couple of favourites in this batch. Firstly the eScooter rider with his dog. I sat on a wall waiting patiently for an interesting scene to appear at this spot.Thanks to Jesse Marlow from Leica Akademie Australia for encouraging me to be patient. He was right -an interesting scene did come past and I caught the dog cantering along with his tongue hanging out and just one paw on the ground.

The second is the night scene in the old city. I was returning from dinner with the group when I spotted it. It was taken at 1/80th second at f2.0 at ISO 2500. 

Usually I would not take my camera with me when going out to dinner but we did eat in some great rooftop locations so our cameras came with us and it served me well in this instance. The danger is that you accidentally leave your camera behind in the restaurant at the end of the evening, particularly after a few drinks. And leaving a $12000 camera in a restaurant in Tangier, or indeed anywhere, is not a situation I want to think about.

The portrait of the girl in a shop is something of an oddity. Photographing people, particularly older women, in Morocco is difficult and I have a feeling it's becoming more difficult thanks to the many tourists armed with smartphones taking photos of everything everywhere. This girl was friendly so capturing that smile was easy but one has to be very careful and above all respectful. 

 

With the Leica Akademie in Morocco-Part 1

It's been nearly a month since I posted on the blog as I've just spent 15 days on a Leica Akademie photo tour in Morocco followed by a week stricken with covid since I returned home.

I have now recovered enough to process and post  photos from the tour. 

It was great trip, albeit very tiring. It was a small group-just nine participants plus two from Leica Australia.

It most definitely motivated me to take some of my best photos. Most of the group used the new irys app to post photos as we went along and this made it very easy to see the standard being achieved by others.

 I will post the photos in the order in which they were taken starting with the first stop, interesting and surprising, Tangier.

I had previously been to Morocco in 1988 and 1994. It certainly has changed since those visits. I'd go as far as to say that it is now one of the best countries I have ever visited as a tourist. Unfortunately I'm not the only one who feels this way as Morocco is experiencing a tourism boom so if you are considering visiting go now before it is swamped. 

I used my Q3 43 on the trip. All the participants were, of course, using Leicas. M11 users dominated  followed by Q3 43 and SL2/SL3 users. I was the only participant who used just one camera.

Here's the first photos -from the first days.

 

Aussie Tatts

 There was a huge concrete pour on a construction site down the street today and the heavily tattooed operator of the concrete pumper was standing  watching the activity on the site as vast quantities of concrete were pumped in under his control.

 As soon as I saw him I thought 'photo opportunity' so I headed straight back to the house, grabbed a camera and then, with some apprehension, approached him. He was, in fact, very friendly and only too pleased to let me photograph his amazing Oz body art of which he was obviously proud. 

He did tell me how much it all cost but that's not for telling here although I am curious as to why only one leg has been decorated. Perhaps the cash ran out before the project was completed. I'll never know.

 Photos taken with Leica SL2 with APO Summicron SL 2/50 ASPH lens. Photo processed in Lightroom and converted to monochrome in Silver EFX Pro2

 

Face at the window

 

Rosie was working in the office at her computer when she looked up and saw this young waterdragon watching her. Much to my surprise it did not move when I went outside to photograph it and as I type this it has climbed the flyscreen on the outside and is now completely still halfway up the window.

I hope that Smudge does not chase it as they are very vicious and their bite is nasty.

Zoom on Smudge

 

 I used the Leica SL2 with the Sigma F2.8 24-70mm lens for this photo of Smudge taken this afternoon. 

Sigma make some excellent lenses nowadays and this is one of them. Rumour has it that the identical specification Leica 24-70mm F2.8 zoom lens is actually manufactured by Sigma.

 I owned a Vivitar zoom lens for my Olympus OM2 SLR in the early 1980's. I cannot remember the lens's specification and at the time I thought that the performance was pretty good. Vivitar was an American brand name but their lenses were made by a variety of Japanese manufacturers.

Today top specification zoom lenses are very close to top specification prime lenses in terms of performance and many middle of the road kit zoom lenses are excellent performers.

A hive of activity

 

 

After weeks of wet weather which set work way behind schedule this Terrigal building site has been a hive of activity since the weather turned. Last week they were pumping concrete well into the night.

Leica Q3 43 photo. This is a very small part of a full frame jpeg file straight from the camera.The resolving power of the lens is on full display.

 

Surely not a massacre?

 

 

Leaving the bar of the Avoca Surf Club on Saturday afternoon Rosie and I were confronted with this appalling sight. Body parts scattered around the floor of a side room. Had there been a silent massacre -perhaps a mass shooting?

Fortunately the explanation was straightforward. A class on CPR -cardiopulmonary resuscitation and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation- for surfguards had just ended and the training dummies had been left on the floor.

Taken with my iPhone - the camera lenses obviously needed a clean. 

 

 

Boys with a motorbike-Myanmar

All quiet here on the photo front. It's just over two weeks before I head off to Morocco so here's one of my all time favourite photos from my archive-two boys with a motorcycle in Pathein on the the Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar.

The photo was taken in the late afternoon of March 2018 on my last visit to Myanmar . The two boys exude attitude. The setting could be anywhere. Only the registration plate on the motorcycle says it was taken in Myanmar.

The photo was taken with my Leica Q. 

More Myanmar

 The previous post- the photo of the girl riding her bike with an umbrella /sunshade has been well received so I have been diving into the library again looking for more photos from Myanmar and I found these two for starters. Both taken on 24th December 2012 at the same temple in Mandalay.

Although they were taken nearly 13 years ago I can remember the exact circumstances where and when I took them.

We were with a small group who were travelling down the Irrawaddy River on a small riverboat starting out from Mandalay the next day. We had already visited two temples and I was beginning to experience early symptoms of "not another temple" fatigue. So I hung back from the group and by luck spotted these two photo ops.

The photos were taken with my Leica X1 which even today I would still rate as one of the best of the many cameras I have owned. Small, light, with simple controls/menus and superb image quality it is still a star 16 years after it was launched.

 

Girl on a bike-Myanmar

 Another photo which has laid unoticed in the  Pictures library on my computer until today. Taken in September 2018 on a very hot afternoon in a small town in the Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar. 

Myanmar was one of my absolute favourite countries to visit. Sadly it is a very different story today. Tourists are not welcome. The democratically elected government was overthrown in a bloody military coup in 2020. There is an ongoing civil war and to add to to the misery there was a devastating earhquake earlier this year. So sad and such beautiful people and such a beautiful country.

Photo taken with my Leica Q.