As part of the launch programme for the Leica M-D, the Leica Blog published a sequence of inspiring pictures taken by three leading photographers on the streets of Porto:
If music is the universal language, then photography is the language of your inner self. It’s the constant art of observation that comes with discipline, patience, criteria, and openness. There comes a point in time when one must look back at the past and observe what can be learned in order to improve the future. This happens in almost every aspect of the human life, and it very much happens with photography. A single camera is capable of doing this. Of inspiring and reinvigorating three professional photographers who may come from different backgrounds or speak different languages, but are united by the language of photography, in a journey that takes them to a city with a unique camera, bringing the past to the present, reimagining the future and exploring their inner selves.
The collections from Nicholas La, Rui Palha and Daniel Arnold demonstrate the capabilities of the M-D and make you want to get out there and grab some shots. They are inspiring.
Exploring Porto with the Leica M-D from Leica Camera on Vimeo.
I am not at all enthusiastic about this video.The production values are high and Porto looks a beautiful city but to me it looks like a typical "hipster" video-"cool" but meaningless. We see very few examples of the photos they have taken. We don’t really hear about the unique M-D user experience and why does he have to go into a filthy dilapidated building in beautiful Porto to take very ordinary photos which he could have taken in a million similar dilapidated sites anywhere in the world?
To me the worst feature of the video is the "street "photographer who menacingly sticks his camera almost into people’s faces as they walk along the street.This is a gross invasion of privacy and surely borders on assault. If he did that to me he would spend the rest of the day trying to find the small components of his very broken M-D which are littering the pavement.
Sorry Leica you can do much better than this.