Re-post November 2011

One of the great things owning a Leica M9 and 50mm summilux is the ability to shoot in the dark.  For most, this is only possible with the use of a flash.  Personally, I try to shoot without one as much as possible because I like natural lighting.  Shooting at low apertures such as 1.4 allows for shooting in almost complete darkness (the leica noctilux is probably the only one that truly will allow you to do this).  It is much more difficult to focus, prevent blur, and you have to shoot at high ISO’s.  Fortunately, the M9 can perform this at 1000, 1500, and even 2500 ISO.  Unfortunately, I typically don’t like color pics at this high of ISO therefore I always change them to black and white.  The noise at these high ISO’s add to the quality of black and white.

A friend of mine, Hiro Shibuya (he was my chief resident when I was a first year) and I were recently in Washington D.C. for a conference and decided to spend some time sight seeing and taking pictures.  We were at the Lincoln Memorial and he was trying to get that perfect picture and I caught him in the act.  In this instance, him being out of focus works because of the sense of movement the viewer gets.  This was probably one of my favorite pics.

You can view Hiro’s pictures here.