Monograph: Q2MR Nature
Photographs aren’t meant to be made and then forgotten. At least that’s what I think. Maybe for some (Gary Winogrand is said to have died leaving around 2.500 rolls of undeveloped film when he died - 36-exposure rolls, so about 90,000 images - and hundreds of unedited contact sheets so, basically, 300,000 unedited images), but not for me. Yes, it’s hard to revisit images, particularly when you’re consistently making more images and you want and need to work on those new images. It’s harder to revisit images when there’re on a disk drive. That’s why we have the website (it’s more for me than for you folks, but thanks for reading). And that’s why we print things. It’s like giving life to an image.
I’ve been going back and forth the past year or so about how to compile images I enjoy into packages that are accessible. There’s the website as I just mentioned, and individual prints (though, we haven’t figured out how to package/display them yet), and I’ve even tried the Lightroom Book module (the file sizes for the PDF books get to be rather huge). I’m still working on this “problem,” but in the meantime, life goes on and I try to get work out.
These next two posts started out as an idea for a couple of monographs, and then a book. How much of an idea for a book you may ask? Enough to write an introduction to the book. Problem is . . . the book never quite took shape (see - file size issue noted above). I was hoping to create a place on the Terrell.photos website where folks could download free pdf books of photographs, but I can’t figure out how to reduce them to a size that keeps the quality of the images and can be uploaded to the website for download by others. Again, the problem I’ll have to try and solve (I’ve already got a couple of books just waiting for upload).
So in the meantime I decided to move forward with what I know works. For the very reasons I wanted to do a book, I decided to do a couple of monographs. Sure, monographs (yes, that is plural) would have significantly fewer images, but it would accomplish my ends and relieve me of that itch that accompanies work that doesn’t quite feel completed.
So here is the first of the two monographs: Q2MR Nature.
And because I’m lazy, I’m going to cut and paste the introduction to the book that these images (along with others) would have gone into.
“Cameras are just a tool. I get that. Pretty much any modern camera, to include those on the latest phones, can produce an image that is equal to if not better than what many film cameras could produce when I started photographing. If all you are interested in is capturing the image you see with your eye, then pretty much any camera today, within reasonable limits, can do the job and do it well. Lens optics are better, digital sensors can record much more detail with a significantly broader dynamic range than film could, and the results are immediately available for review, so you can retake the shot just in case you didn’t quite get what you wanted. And I’m not going to get into how AI has already greatly impacted the potential of photography. In many ways, photography has never been easier.”
“But for those of us that appreciate the craft of photography, the experience of going out and exploring the world visually and for whom photography is a means of seeing the world in new and different ways, not all cameras are equal.”
“Some cameras are a joy to use. They feel so good in the hand that you want to pick them up and use them. That’s great, because it means you’ll get out and photograph more (and who doesn’t like to go out photographing?). Some cameras give you the experience of working your craft. To be honest, that’s what I miss most about the old film days - I miss operating the controls of a view camera and, I’ll admit, I occasionally even miss working in the darkroom. There is also a whole lot I don’t miss from those days. It was hard to get good results back then and when you did, you knew you had earned it. But I digress. Some cameras just feel great in the hand - boy do I miss my Contax 645 some days. Best of all, though, is some cameras even force you to see things differently. With film you were locked into a certain color (or black and white) characteristic once you put film in the camera - each type of film rendered the world differently, which you learned to incorporate into your image-making. With some cameras even the image you look at isn’t always the way it is in front of you. Sure, the image in the eyepiece of a single lens reflex camera or a more modern mirrorless camera reproduces the world as it is before you, but use an older waist-level camera and left is right and right is left. And on the ground glass of a view camera, that is compounded by the image appearing upside-down to boot. You eventually get used to it, but I suspect it has some impact on the way one sees. Ultimately, some cameras not only make images, they encourage you to work differently, to expand how you practice your craft. Expand the way you see. And you come to enjoy operating the camera.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever first thought about buying a particular camera and pulling the trigger on buying it as quickly as I did with the Leica Q2 Monochrome Reporter (Q2MR). It happened in little over a month, much to my surprise, especially considering its price. The choice to go with a camera that photographs only in black and white was intentional. And given that it is a Leica, I expected that the experience of using a well-made tool would be a wonderful tactile experience (it has been). What I hadn’t expected is that it is not just a fantastic tool to create black and white images (and I have to think and see in black and white to make a successful image with it), but it is a tool that has expanded the way I work and, ultimately, the things I see, both in color and in black and white.”
“I had not expected it, but I primarily use the Q2MR hand-held. Yes, I have mounted it on a tripod to make fine landscape images, but the Q2MR has revealed its true value when I’m walking around with it in hand. In situations where I usually wouldn’t have a camera, I often now have one. It has encouraged me to look for images in very different contexts than when I’m toting a tripod and to see things I would otherwise not normally look at, nonetheless study or photograph. It consistently brings joy in the act of seeing and photographing, and for that the Q2MR deserves some recognition.”
“The idea of compiling Q2MR images started out as a printing project, to print monographs of early Q2MR images so I have them in tangible form. Like this book, the concept was to have two sets of images - Urban and Nature. The thought of packaging the images in an e-book came from the Lightroom book module. Why not also make a book that allows me to include many more of the Q2MR images than I would print for a monograph? Images that are nonetheless worth seeing? So this is it. Q2MR, divided into images from the urban environment and images from the natural environment.”
These are, of course, only a few of the images from the natural environment component of the book. The prints, even at 8-1/2” x 11”, are pretty darned nice.
Next up, Q2MR Urban.