If you have some space in your vintage camera collection for yet another rare Leica, you might want to ready your wallet and check this out.
Here’s another for all you Leica collectors out there with deep pockets to match. Our latest vintage find is an original 1957 black paint Leica MP body with a matching Leicavit MP fast winder. If this is something that tickles your fancy, be prepared to shell out a whopping $237,500 for it!
All images by Laura Makabresku. Used with permission.
I’ve always believed that more than looking technically outstanding and visually impressive, photographs should be able to make the viewers feel. This often best applies to portrait photography, but is also at the heart of much conceptual photography out there. Case in point is the poignant work of Poland-based Laura Makabresku, who I believe creates some of the most beautifully emotive and unique photos today. Armed with visual narratives that are both mysterious and graceful, she appeals to our innermost emotions, which she describes as “opposites that build tensions within ourselves, which spark our creativity and vitality.”
In the insightful interview below, she shares a little secret about herself, the motivations behind her work, and how she lets the stories and ideas percolate in her head until the moment is right to translate them into photos.
All images and text by Stevie Iseral. Used with permission. In a precious version of this article we called Stevie a man. She is a woman, and we apologize for this error.
My name is Stevie Iseral and I began taking photos at the age of fifteen. The moment I picked up my first camera, I immediately fell in love. Throughout my years of taking photos, I have tried to develop my own personal style. Being from Louisiana, there aren’t many modeling agencies available. This pushed me to challenge my skills and photograph my friends and family. I like to describe my work as dreamy, delicate, and colorful. My main goal in photography is to capture an individual’s natural beauty and help them see why they are so special. Everyone is so different, and I think it is amazing that we can capture that in a photo.
All images by Thibaud Poirier. Used with Creative Commons permission.
Hong Kong is a favorite of many photographers for its multi-faceted character as a city, especially when it comes to its culture and architecture. Just one of the countless photographic odes to the city is the cleverly-titled Residensity, a most recent work by Paris-based Thibaud Poirier that shows just how populous Hong Kong is.
Missed our amazing vintage finds? Our latest is a rare Summilux lens that will look gorgeous on your Leica M camera– but also put a dent in your wallet.
It’s been a while since we shared some awesome stuff from the depths of ebay, but we’re sure our recent find is worth the wait. Of course, it has to be yet another Leica. This time, it’s a gorgeous and super rare 35mm Summilux-M f1.4 AA prototype lens that will also surely burn a hole through your wallet.
According to the listing by Canada-based ebay seller setadel_studios, this 35mm Summilux-M f1.4 AA is the only prototype still out there today. It comes in chrome instead of the regular black version; while the latter has a lighter anodized body that weighs 340 g, this prototype has a brass body and weighs a little heavier because of it at 400 g. The AA stands for the double hand-ground aspherical lens element. There’s also a concave lens element on both the front and rear element, and it’s reportedly the only Leica lens to have this feature. All these make it a highly collectible lens along with the likes of the 50mm f1.2 Noctilux.
Markus Hofstaetter has some new, mesmerizing videos showing the wet plate collodion process like you have never seen it before.
Austria-based portrait and wedding photographer Markus Hofstaetter has been sharing with us his crazy cool experiments with the wet plate collodion process, and he has yet another unique take on it for all of us to watch. It’s one thing to watch the plates develop in normal view, but these new videos in an ultra-macro perspective show us what happens in the process in a totally different — and extra magical — light.
All images by François Ollivier. Used with Creative Commons permission.
We all strive to make our travel photos as perfect as possible, sometimes even going as far as looking for the “less traveled” paths on top of some popular, “Instagrammable” locations. Canadian photographer François Ollivier, however, wanted to explore an outrageous idea for travel photography, going towards a “weird” route instead of the usual. The results are pretty amusing, even for Ollivier himself.
Through photography, Skander Khlif freezes fleeting moments in the lives of the commuters of the Moscow Metro.
With a camera in hand, Skander Khlif plants himself right smack in the middle of crowded coaches and bustling hallways in the Moscow Metro. He’s there as an observer, ready to press the shutter and, in essence, freeze a fleeting moment in the life of a commuter at any given moment. Skander, whose work we’ve featured many times on this site, continues to show that he’s very versatile as a creator and documenter.
All images by Ludwig Favre. Used with permission.
If you’re not an early riser, the dreamy images you’re about to see will give you an idea on what you’re missing out. During an early morning stroll in New York City, Paris-based fine art photographer and Lumix Ambassador Ludwig Favre captured a mesmerizing side of Chinatown, showing how it transforms with a bit of rain just before the dawn breaks.
All photos by Øystein Sture Aspelund. Used with Creative Commons permission.
The mere mention of Nordic landscapes brings to mind some dramatic images of snow-capped mountains, frigid vistas, and rugged terrains. But it seems that for Øystein Sture Aspelund, all these are blank canvases waiting to be painted with his surreal visions. And so he does in his most recent body of work called AEON. If you’ve ever wanted to do a unique conceptual twist to landscape photography you may want to take notes from the Oslo-based photographer.
This guy beat all our weekend projects the moment he decided to build his own Hasselblad X-Pan. Yep, you read that right!
Still don’t have the camera of your dreams? Saving up for it is the usual route, but definitely not the only route. You might want to follow the example of photographer and cinematographer Casey Cavanaugh, who took matters into his own hands and built his own Hasselblad X-Pan. If that sounds amazingly cool, we assure you — it is!
Take a look at Tingyu Huang’s colorful portrait series, Chromophobia, named after and shot in response to David Batchelor’s book.
In his 2000 book Chromophobia, artist and author David Batchelor argued that the West hates color. No, really. David wrote: “…color has been the object of extreme prejudice in Western culture… It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, color has been systematically marginalized, reviled, diminished and degraded.” This, more than anything else, is the motivation behind his series “Chromophobia.”
All film photographers have their own reason for sticking to this format, and this is Ben Horne’s.
Landscape photographer Ben Horne is known for working with large format cameras and taking breathtaking images of the wilderness. And in one of his recent videos for his series on YouTube: “Film Photography: The Beauty of Working with a Mature Technology,” he shared with his followers why he enjoys shooting with this medium more than with any digital camera.
All LomoChrome Purple images by Verena Kersting. Used with permission.
The LomoChrome Purple film is without a doubt one of the trippiest, most interesting things we can enjoy with today’s film photography resurgence. It has become a film traveler’s staple, especially for locations with lots of greenery for pleasantly surreal keepsakes of their trips. Case in point is this captivating set that Germany-based Verena Kersting took during her trip to Iceland in 2013.
All text and photos by Ash Smith. Used with permission.
My name is Ash Smith and I am UK-based street photographer, with a background in fine art and graphic design. Inspired by early street photography colorists like Saul Leiter and Fred Herzog, I search out great light, color, and texture to capture intriguing moments in daily life. I am fascinated less by portraits, but more by gestures and expressions and observing how people interact with their environment. Interesting light plays a big part in my work and when out shooting I find that’s the first thing I look for, then I will wait for the right person to come and interact with it.
All photos by Aron Porszasz. Used with Creative Commons permission.
One of the first things we learn about portrait photography is the primary goal of capturing the personality or essence of the subject. Or at least a part of it. Other times, the focus is on the expression and the emotion it conveys. Today’s featured portrait project by Hungarian photographer Aron Porszasz, however, had a slightly different objective: to capture the barest and simplest expressions of his subjects by photographing them in complete darkness.
Photographer Giacomo Bruno trains his lenses on the so-called raw, purple gold of the Amazon and the people who bring it to the world.
Italian photographer Giacomo Bruno traveled all the way to the depths of the Amazon forest, far from civilization, to meet the people of Beira do Río. You see, the people of this community that call Parà, Brazil their home grow and harvest açaì, the fruit of which has been hailed by many as a superfood. It’s so valuable that people all over the world have taken to calling it the raw or purple gold of the Amazon.
In her series, writer and visual artist Cate Wnek bares parts of her soul through words and images.
Cate Wnek photographs as beautiful and poetic as she writes. This much shines through as we look at her series, Raising Goosebumps. Each image that comprises it might not easily make sense individually, but collectively – words, pictures, and all – they seem to invite the viewer to take a closer look and see the inner workings of her mind.
“Raising Goosebumps is a process of holding on and letting go, facing fragility with curiosity and reflection,” Cate says. She expresses hope that the images serve as an “experiential escape” both for the viewer and for herself, in which she “can escape from expectations to reconnect with my own childlike imagination and kid eyes.”
All photos by Todd Antony. Used with permission.
Japanese culture is full of many fascinating and colorful subcultures, but perhaps there’s nothing as intriguing as the Dekotora tradition. As its name — a portmanteau of the Japanese pronunciations of “decor” and “truck” — suggests, it involves decorating a truck’s interior but following a certain theme, or an aesthetic even. Dekotora is a mostly unknown culture among the older generations, and UK-based commercial advertising photographer Todd Antony helps shed light on this through his personal project of the same name.
Cosplay photography by Lina Aster. Used with Creative Commons permission.
While cosplay is fascinating in itself, cosplay photography has also been a big part of the craft. In fact, it has long been a popular sub-genre of portrait photography, with a cult culture of its own among comic book, video games, and movie geeks. Today’s cosplay photography inspiration is not only a fine example of beautifully done cosplay, but also a stunning cosplay photography project perfect for the Halloween season. If you’re a fan of cosplay or do a lot of cosplay photography yourself, we’re sure you’ll like this one!
Julie Hrudova curates StreetRepeat to map trends and similarities in street photography and to show how photographers inspire and influence one another.
Julie Hrudova is a photographer and photo editor whose work in street photography has garnered her distinctions from award-giving bodies in the industry, as well as spots in many shows internationally. Her photographs are often unexpected – quirky and sometimes surreal, even. Continue reading…
