I prefer to avoid discussing particular technologies or brands but this is a bit of meta introspection and some concrete terms are unavoidable.

This substack was started November last year, making it week six or so. While I have had a slew of self hosted blogs for over twenty years, they inevitably faltered. I joined substack to share some of my latest ramblings, as well as my daily photo project, thinking the built in audience and some feedback would help the habit stick. The period overlapped with kids being on summer holidays (southern hemisphere) for four of those weeks, which kept me out of my normal office routine.

Over the past six weeks, I have discovered some excellent writing, from authors new and old. It’s been a delight to have such a range of high quality prose at my beck and call. And the extra time away from the 9-5 permitted an exuberant indulgence. What others might rightly refer to as, doom scrolling.

Getting a tad more meta, several articles delved into life offline, a topic I have also touched on. Coinciding with new years, many claiming 2026 the year of analogue, the year without screens, the year offline. At times recognizing the irony of this theme being heavily discussed, online. One sub genre I can’t quite understand though, are posts on the benefits of quitting social media, little tidbits about finding bliss, on substack, a social media platform.

It boils down to two culprits, as to why substack is no different from all other social media platforms.

1. Short form content

2. The algorithm

Short form content

Some have suggested it was the notes feature that spelled the end of substack being an oasis of calm. Though youtube fell firmly into the social media cesspit long before the addition of shorts. Substack already had clickbait titles, “Stop doing X, instead do this.”, “What I was wrong about” etc. The same comment game, in which a large chunk are there only to drive attention to the commenter, instead of participating in meaningful conversation. And the same plethora of “creators” who’s sole contribution to the human condition is trying to convince people to pay them to teach you, how to make money on substack.

That said, I do think the addition of notes has accelerated the decline. All existing issues aside, short form content fuels mediocrity. Instead of a short list of exceptionally crafted essays, I am now daily confronted with a deluge of hot takes, memorable quotes and inspirational words rarely surpassing the wisdom of “Live Love Laugh”. In addition to plagiarized words and art, posted to boost the posters popularity. Not to mention, an explosion of one liners, lacking any clarity or context, which exist entirely to feed the monster, the algorithm.

The algorithm

A foundational problem of the digital age, is the obsession with one metric, one that has been monopolizing our attention since it was first measured, time on site. True, substack doesn’t make money through third party advertising, like most of the commercial internet. Yet they still want you on site as much as possible, the more you use substack, the more likely you are to pay for subscriptions, and substack will get its ten percent. You might think of this as first party advertising. They want to advertise the writers on platform, hoping you support them. While I am not privy to the exact working of the substack algorithm, it is safe to assume it relies on “engagement” and being able to recommend more of the same.

Engagement is generally some mix of time on content, number of likes and number of replies. Which explains the barrage of notes from well seeming individuals, claiming to want to read people like you, asking for a link to your substack. Knowing that any post with a large number of comments looks like it has high engagement and will be boosted to more people. Fundamentally the platform wants viralitiy, as brain rot leads to time on site, which leads to subscriptions, and an increase in revenue.

Its hard enough to convey a complex idea in 140 characters, even harder to do so in a balanced way which examines the greyer sides of existence. While there is no explicit upper limit on length of notes, years of experience has taught people how to juice engagement through short form. How a divisive statement, or a banal one, induces a flood of replies and re posting. All done in service of the mighty algorithm.

The interim

For now my solution is to be decidedly anti-social, whilst retaining the media platform. With my return to office hours, I don’t have the time to be sucked into an endless feed. Yet, I wish to keep reading the excellent long form content I’ve discovered. Luckily there is a middle ground; by using a foundational technology of the open internet, RSS, I am able to read articles on my e-reader. It’s not widely advertised but all substacks have a feed, generally at subname.substack.com/feed or customdomain/feed eg. reflections.8by3.net/feed.

The future

The world needs a public square for thoughtful, considered conversations. One free of any algorithmic feed, which will inevitably be gamed.

A key driving force behind the unhealthy norms of social media platforms, is venture capital. Platforms can’t help but enshitify themselves, in pursuit of the constant growth their financial backers require. This is what leads to the obsession with time on site, and other metrics which demand growth at all costs. Any true public square, would require a different financial foundation. Likely that of a non profit.

This is a project I am working on.

Starting with a dislike of surveillance capitalism, I stopped using google services about 10 years ago. And cancelled my amazon account after watching “Sorry we missed you”. Thus I severed my connection to big tech and the attention economy, the one remaining product was a phone.

Being a child of the 80s, phones weren’t a defacto part of life growing up. Even so, I got my first relatively late, at the age of 24. I didn’t see the point of paying for the privilege of being interrupted at any time. It wasn’t until 2009 when phones had the connectivity and performance to really call them smart, that I bought one. It was hardly a phone after all, rather a small computer with cellular internet. The first pocketable device with miracle technologies like GPS maps, fast tethering and highly functional apps. Nine years on from that initial smartphone, in 2018, I jumped ship and bought a dumb phone.

I didn’t doom scroll, but it was ever-present and ever distracting. I could always look up some tedious fact, or check the weather, or read some important article about becoming more zen. I also listened to a lot of podcasts, often at 1.5 - 2 times normal speed to increase my productivity. The smart phone provided both visual and auditory stimulus that generally exceeded my immediate surroundings. Why sit in a park and listen to bird song when you could catch up on a podcast. Or appreciate the architectural details of a building, while you wait for something, when you could read a great article.

The dumb phone did solve this problem, it provided zero stimulus, though it also sucked. Beyond the obvious, of becoming overly reliant on maps. The software and hardware were pretty bad. It needed regular resetting and T9 is slow, that friction is part of the point, but I didn’t text much anyway, which meant I spent more time on the phone typing the odd short message. I lasted a couple of years, but the poor execution eventually lead me back to a smartphone.

It wasn’t long till I was back to the odd podcast, the odd search; not doom scrolling levels but enough stimulus to remove me from being entirely present. As sentiment continued to shift, and books like “Digital Minimalism” and “Stolen Focus” were pushing these ideas into the mainstream, new devices started to emerge. Constantly searching for that tiny spark of dopamine. What better way to scratch ones anti consumer, minimalist itch, but by buying a new product. Needless to say, I resisted, but only just.

In the end I went back to my then three, now four and half year old smartphone, and made it dumb. The only third party apps are Signal messenger, a remote for my music server and a home security app. Of the stock apps I use maps when going to new places, a calendar, the weather app to check UV levels and a lists app for a shopping list. No email, no podcasts, no browser. According to the screen time app, I use the device around five to ten minutes per day, depending on if I am using maps, changing music or messaging more than usual. I don’t enable bluetooth, any music listening is controlling a stereo in front of a couch, actively listening. It is also permanently in silent mode, and will only vibrate when called by a known contact. This device is low on the stimulus hierarchy, it doesn’t distract.

With over ten years on and off the cushion with a meditation practice, I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about being distracted. Phones, and the windows they open into the attention economy are perhaps humanities best distraction devices yet. Though what I’ve come to realize, especially when observing my children, is that its less about distraction itself and more about a hierarchy of stimulus.

We love easy, and our brains crave stimulus. There’s a reason processed junk food is more popular than whole food, pop music than classical, Hollywood blockbusters than the theater. They each provide more stimulus for the effort of consumption. And yet, each was arguably the most exciting thing around before the other existed. Each at the top of their relative hierarchies for a time. Doubtless displacing things that came before. Cooked stew over raw meat, symphony music over monophony, broadway shows over a man in a wig, shouting at you.

I see this playing out daily with my children’s toys. One that moves itself with batteries is taken over one that makes a noise and continues when physically pushed, over one that makes no noise and stops when friction or obstacle halt its progress. They each sit lower on the hierarchy, reward vs effort.

People are able to choose, to understand there is more to something than surface stimulus. Countless young adults, who grew up with smart phones are taking steps to live free from them. But it’s a hard sell for the very young, without a rational foundation as to why one might be ultimately better than the other. The wooden train set my son loves playing with, will be ignored if the firetruck that continues after pushed is in sight, which will be stepped over if someone has a remote control car. I’ve not had to tackle this particular challenge myself yet, but its any wonder that people struggle to read novels when video content keeps getting shorter.

My daughters first show, at the age of two, was the original (1970s) sesame street, and she loved it. Followed by the original magic school bus. Both are slower, quieter and more educational than any TV programs made today, even the contemporary versions of the same shows. Sesame street still has some of its charm but half of it is now computer generated and its louder and brighter than before, doubtless to compete with everything else on. The same is true for the magic school bus. She will no longer watch those early sesame street, having had her hierarchies elevated to new heights. I imagine others have shielded their children entirely from all digital media, and while I considered it, I chose to try and build a healthy relationship with quality media, in particular avoiding the major streaming services.

Now its possible to curate their days, their belongings. To spend time in nature, away from stuff, to provide a place of quiet, with minimal stimuli. But they’ll eventually manage their own spaces and the things they put in them. Having only narrowly escaped the attention economy that the majority of my peers fell prey to, I wonder if I’ll be able to keep my children from becoming its next victims.

Its not a coincidence, that most of things that are bad for us, junk food, social media, etc. That provide high stimulus and little to no value are all pushed upon us by corporations seeking profit over all else. Just like the dieting advice to not have junk food in your home, we should avoid having junk habits in our homes.

Though it’s not only a question of blocking things out, removing the bright light of a phone screen in order to see reality. Developing a deeper appreciation of the world can increase the inherent stimuli of our surroundings. Photography sharpens my awareness, allowing me to notice details that I might otherwise pass by. The visual arts are obvious, but an interest in nature itself, the plants or animals also heightens ones experience. An understanding of cloud formation enables you to look up and discern changing weather patterns. Knowledge of musical theory gives depth to bird song and so on.

Think about the things in your life that provide empty stimulus, that distract from taking the time, or making the effort to actually see the inherent quality all around. Again, chances are the good stuff isn’t being sold to you by a corporation. The world is already exciting enough, not to require any further purchases.

The question of truth has framed the photographic art form from the beginning. Leading to an active rejection of reality in the early days, resulting in Pictorialism, to a later embrace in the documentary movement. Impacting how photos are displayed and even how they are taken, from the inclusion of the negative border to prove the image wasn’t cropped, to the resurgence of analogue methods, in part due to the perception of its authenticity.

I’ve touched on these ideas here in which I discuss taking photos as I see the world, and here on how we can believe what we see in the finished image. The summary of the two articles might be, photos that look as close to reality as possible, and you need to trust the person who made them.

Photography is the first visual medium in which it is possible to depict reality as it is. Yes, there are limits to technology and a defining element of the medium, the frame; which implies the exclusion of detail, both in exactly what was in frame and exactly when was in frame. But given those limitations, if you trust the author and their process, you can assume what you see, actually happened.

There is of course a snag, did it happen through what freewill the subjects depicted might have or was a scene somehow orchestrated. Was something in the frame moved just so, a distracting orange cone shifted a few meters say. Or a subject asked to look towards, or away from the camera, or even told precisely what to wear, how to hold their body and all lighting artificially produced.

Yesterday, I took an image that crystallized the idea I’ve been dancing around, for me. While there is nothing inherently wrong with orchestration, it doesn’t preclude the result from being photography, it is not the kind of imagery I care to consume, or produce. A simple description might be documentary photography or photojournalism but many of my images are of no great social value, they are just a record of the world as it is, or more precisely, as it was. Street photography is another label that comes close, finding beauty in chance encounters. Candid photography perhaps comes closest.

While there may be formal, semi objective qualities to some of my favourite images, if they would have been orchestrated, they’d hold no value in my view. It’s the fact that the scene unfolded in front of me, and I was able to capture a slice of it in a visually pleasing way that makes the image.

The image in question, is of my two children playing. The whole scene lasted perhaps 15 seconds, and I took two images. My daughter was standing chatting to me while I read; for reasons unclear to me, she had put on a red coat. My son ran in waving a flashlight, and I managed to grab my camera, which was on a table next to me, and take two frames, then he ran out.

While I might like the image for technical reasons, I love the image, due to the absurdity, and beauty of real life. I could not have dreamt up the scene, dressed the subjects and asked them to pose. I don’t know if people are able to pose three and five year olds, I assume there are kids in ads, perhaps they are glued to the spot or promised copious amounts of chocolate. Otherwise they are composite shots from green rooms or such.

Below are a handful of images which are the result of constantly looking, and ensuring a camera is generally on my person. All shot in the last month. Scenes that presented themselves to me, unassisted.

While images of my children embody this beauty and absurdity, often in a very literal sense. I also pause to look at otherwise mundane scenes and appreciate these qualities in them.

Below are three examples, all taken in the last week. None would necessarily win an award, or even fit into a category to do so, yet I love them. They are not overly complicated, not trying to be clever, only simple studies of light I find falling around me.

Can one do candid photography of a tree, or a leaf? Do such labels or categories even provide any value? Is it still candid, if the subject has spotted you but not changed what they were already doing. Can I start a new genre of “as it is” or perhaps, “as it was” photography to signal my intentions.

Two ideas that I keep coming back to, are that none of these images were preconceived and all of them happened recently, neither looking back or forward. Only at the now. While I don’t think its impossible to like your old work, I have images hung on my wall I took 20 years ago. There is a particular joy in continuing to look, not rest on your catalogue, but to be moving forward. In each article I write, I use images from the last few weeks. Doubtless, there will be some projects that require a longer perspective, possibly years until there is a complete body of work. Once they are done though, I plan to move forward, as I have with previously completed projects. Perhaps this is why I prefer “as it is” to “as it was”, knowing full well that “is” is for ever passing into “was”.

I’ll keep my eyes open, and see what the world presents.

Never on the cutting edge of early adoption, as the platforms weren’t something I was interested in, I was instead, an early unadopter, one of the first users to leave. Quitting, before it was trendy.

I joined facebook in ‘05, flickr in ‘07 and twitter in ‘09. I used each for a few weeks before deciding they weren’t for me. Facebook I actively deleted, the latter two accounts are still online, as I long ago lost access. I occasionally lookup how to mend something on one of the video platforms but have never had an account, never subscribed, or commented. And didn’t have the slightest interest in instagram; photography is a slow medium, images take time to produce and should be given time in review.

A few months ago, slogging through a work project that would have had Sisyphus questioning his efforts, I yearned for a creative outlet. I had continued to have my own website, and over the years made a few stabs at blogging, but it never took. Approaching a milestone in life, with an ever growing number of grey hairs, I thought I should review the state of social media.

At first I was enamored with the small web. Being allergic to advertising, it seemed the perfect non-commercial technology to use as a creative outlet. Somewhere to put my photography and ramblings that fit my sensibilities. Text first, free from commercial potential and easily self hosted. I setup a site (gemini://8by3.net/~sbr/) and started writing. The rub being, you need a special browser to actually view any of it, something the vast majority wouldn’t have, or the inclination to setup. In some ways this was part of the appeal. As it was a space to share my creative output, safe from the rampages of AI bots. On further reflection, it was shouting into the void. The sub section of the already tiny user base, that might have been interested in my musings, was minuscule. Does an artist need an audience, no. Not need, but a conversation is more rewarding than a soliloquy. The small web is a delight, though ultimately poorly suited to my mixed media needs. Its primarily a space for the technically inclined, as it requires a degree of DIY’ism and as such the subject matter is slanted towards the technical. Something I have little interest in discussing.

My next foray was into the video platforms. I had low expectations, having long ago removed big tech from my life, with the sole exception of a five year old phone. Nevertheless, I wanted to see what others with similar inclinations produced. With the requisite ad blockers in place, I ventured forth.

This is where I got my first whiff of social marketing. Without exception, people creating content in the photography space were producing marketing material of one shape or another. There are the very obvious gear driven videos, either directly sponsored by companies or indirectly by loaning the gear for review. But the more insidious content sells the lifestyle. How to grow an audience, how to be authentic, et cetera. Everywhere I looked, the same formulaic, click bait ploys leveraged. “Dont buy until you watch”, “What I was wrong about”, “How I learned”, “The mistakes”. The promise of a real human connection, only to be provided with a listicle and reasons why brand X or thing Y is the best purchase they made. For those few who managed to avoid brand sponsorship, why you should pay them for their artistic wisdom, by taking a workshop, buying their book, etc. To their credit, I don’t think any of them are bad people, they have simply learned what the algorithm rewards and one assumes, feel they have no choice but to play the game.

Which leads to my current experiment, substack. In many ways it has a much more transparent commercial contract. Creatives can charge for access, or request donations. Though one assumes there are the same influence campaigns at work, individuals provided with favours of some sort in order to quietly endorse products or services, even to their paid up readers.

Substack is also littered with the same elusive promises of freedom. Social marketers, who provide the secretes of how to grow your audience, quit the rat race and make a living on the platform. The X easy steps, how they were doing it wrong for Y years and can now share the secret. Those deriding the grind, hustle culture et cetera, only to follow with their highly priced coaching business, their course, their book. One wonders how their clients are going to earn a living, if they all follow in their footsteps and become social marketers.

Fundamentally this isn’t new, these are advertisers and motivational speakers of yesteryear with a slightly tweaked model. What is perhaps new are those currying popularity without anything genuine to offer. Countless accounts posting inspirational quotes, or other peoples art work (with our without a byline) all to garner likes. Turned to eleven, with posts containing AI generated content. Perhaps the idea is that by doing so they can grow a large enough following to gain the attention of advertises and start to inject products into their feeds of drivel and stolen creativity.

Having entirely avoided the drudgery of social media, never with any inclination to doom scroll, why partake you might ask?

At least for now, with judicious use of the block and mute function, I’ve found a small community of people who share some of my sensibilities. Those who see beauty in the world around them, and are able to capture a sliver of its essence in their art, and writing. Considering the tens of millions of users on this platform, finding a few dozen such people feels like a success. Being able to keep up with this small number, via delightful images and long form writing is a rewarding experience. Is it without risk?, no. One needs to diligently curate relationships of trust. To sip from the well and not let the firehouse loose.

Preceding the rise of luddism, was the enclosure act of 1773, followed by several amendments to expand said act. These laws took land that had been in the common domain, and put them in the hands of private landlords. Quite literally to enclose them with fences and walls, to keep the commoner out.

Doubtless there were many arguments in support of this process but by far the most striking in my mind was the popularization of the idea of “The tragedy of the commons” in 1883. Which suggests that common ownership would lead to degradation of such resources, thus the only solution is to keep them in private hands. A piece of propaganda that is entirely taken for granted and even quoted by well meaning individuals today.

The parallels between the enclosure of land in the 17th century and digital enclosure lead by AI companies today are many. Then land was the source of wealth, today it is information, and creativity.

Information being ephemeral, they don’t need to physically lock it away, its enough to have consumed all that was created by humans; words, images, films, and audio. To undermine our ability to earn a livelihood producing more. Creating a de facto monopoly on creativity. In the same way that the theft of public land concentrated vast wealth in the hands of land and factory owners. The theft of human creativity is concentrating wealth in the owners of a handful of tech companies.

With parallels to the many competing for soul destroying factory jobs, today many are tempted to leverage AI tools to make a living. To put bread on the table.

Not only does this threaten countless creative endeavours, ending the livelihoods of the many, for the benefit of the few. It spells the end of trust.

Perhaps trust is not crucial when you are using AI to produce a limerick about your cat, even to turn it into a song. We have long understood that the written word in itself held no trust value, it was only by associating it with a real person or a reputable organization that trust could be assigned.

But the wholesale production of false imagery and speech represents a new paradigm. Seeing is believing, yet we can no longer believe what we see. For the purposes of this piece, I am primarily interested in imagery, in photos. Though the manipulation of all forms of human communication and creativity are already having major impacts on society.

Deepfakes have been around since ~2017, and the term was commonly used up until recently, when doubtless a marketing department coined something less controversial, generative AI.

So what do we do? How do we trust what we see, when it takes a matter of seconds to generate an image of anything.

In conversation with other photographers, some feel that analogue methods are inherently more trust worthy. The fact that an analogue process was followed has a trust value greater than digital. Yet this quickly falls apart when we consider how media is both produced and consumed. Statistically speaking, no one is looking at images produced entirely via analogue means. Never mind that fakery has existed as long as photography. The simplest form today would be creating a negative from a digital source. Even those committing to an analogue process are more realistically using a hybrid one. Negatives are scanned into a computer, at which point they are susceptible to all the powers of generative AI. A picture of them holding the negative, the polaroid, you name it, also fakeable.

If there is any hope, its likely with better technology, not stepping back. Programs like c2pa promise to use cryptographic signatures in camera, to prove that the image was actually taken with a camera. I understand this will also use depth information to stop people taking pictures of generated content on a screen.

Will this save us entirely from the enclosure by big tech, not at all. We all need to be vigilant, voting with our wallets, by not using these platforms. To inform others of the risks, and how to be more media savvy. To ensure when programs like c2pa become wide spread, we know how to check. And we need to trust individuals and dare I say, organizations again. To ensure words and images come from reputable sources. No coloured check mark is going to solve that in a single swoop. The key is to build relationships. And maybe, just maybe, if someone says they are a luddite, its safe to assume they aren’t going anywhere near AI tools, unless its with a hammer.

There is a lot to be said about the need for boredom in our modern attention commoditized age, reducing distractions and spending more time in quiet contemplation, though that’s not the kind of boring I mean today. What I am interested in the visually mundane, the world more or less, as it is. No extreme perspectives, angles or filters. While an exact replication is impossible, I’ve recently been on a quest to reproduce the world as it appears to me, as it is.

A light touch

No current photographic medium can perfectly represent the dynamic range of our eyes, or the final image that our brains project into consciousness. And no camera captures and processes light in exactly the same way as another, though it is fair to say they generally attempt to faithfully represent reality. Thus a light hand in the edit, fixing white balance and generally reducing contrast helps an image retain its ‘as it is’ quality. Apart from the censoring that choosing a frame inevitably is, and the odd crop to correct a wonky horizon, the images are as seen.

Perspective

While not impossible, it’s rare that one lie on the floor to look up at something, or stand on a ladder to look down in day to day existence. A photo taken at head height, is a fair representation of what the world looks like to me. Yes, someone of different stature has a different perspective, but then it is their perspective, not mine.

Depth

There is something alluring about shallow depth of field, especially when you first get your hands on a capable lens. And while the human eye has an aperture that reproduces the experience, even when looking at something very close, backgrounds are never indistinguishable. My preference is that the fore, mid and background all be identifiable for what they are. The above image, on on the edge of where I like, simplifying the background without making it obscure.

Field of view

There is general consensus that the human field of view falls somewhere between a 35 and 50 mm lens on a standard 35mm camera (full frame). Not just in the width, but also in the amount of visual compression that so called “normal” lenses produce. Our vision feels wider but in reality we are quickly darting back and forth, from one smaller point of focus to another to produce panoramic vision.

In my own photographic life, I’ve flitted between 35mm and 50mm lenses. Though I invariably owned both on whatever system I was using, just in case. The 35 used for most things, the 50 reserved for portraits and open spaces. Recently I ended a long unhealthy fling with that company and wanted to reduce my kit as much as possible.

In my quest, I stumbled upon the humble 40mm lens. The 40mm lens and its equivalents, 27mm in APS-C and 50mm in digital medium format are the same size as their respective sensors and as such, are very simple designs. With fewer pieces of glass, which translates to smaller, lighter and cheaper, without compromising on quality. Most companies make a 40mm lens which is pretty fast and often among their smallest and cheapest offering. Not only that but with a few steps forward and a few steps back, the 40mm lens doubles as both a 35 and a 50. As the normal category needed redefining, they are called “super normals”, the 43mm is also in this category.

Since making the switch, some 6 weeks ago, I’ve shot everything at 40mm. Landscapes, architecture, birds, flowers, portraits, and the action adventure genre of small children.

One thing less

So much of our modern age is filled with choice paralysis, the terror of picking the wrong thing. Everywhere we are confronted with dozens of similar options, needing to wade through countless more reviews before we can make up our minds. Inevitability, in a space like photography, acquiring more than one option and then unsure of which to use.

Having even one thing less to think about means I am more likely to go out and shoot. A 40mm lens is the one lens I need, the only I own, and its entirely liberating. At each step of the process, choosing the tool, composing the frame and editing. I don’t need to wonder which filter to use, what whacky perspective to use and what lens. I can venture forth unencumbered, and capture the world, as it is.

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That said, there is one brand I want to discuss, in particular my multi-decade relationship and recent parting.

Leica.

Supposedly the company that everyone loves to hate, though I can find very little honest review of it, or its luxury goods. The closest thing, are clickbait titles which claim to be about why they are selling some Leica, or dislike the brand. Only to be about replacing their current camera with the latest model, or trading a kidney for further purchases.

Lecia’s reputation is built on a solid foundation of excellent glass production and precision machining, in building their mechanical rangefinder cameras, the M, and brilliant lenses. There is absolutely no denying that they innovated and built well regarded photographic tools, from the M3 in 1954 to the M6 in 1984 (produced until 2002).

The romance

I owned two M6s, that I purchased used in the early 2000s for rock bottom prices, as everyone moved to digital. Everything about these cameras was a joy; small, light and nearly silent. A tiny battery powered the light meter and lasted for months, though the camera functioned without it. These were the photographic equivalent of Swiss watches, filled with tiny gears, entirely mechanical in function.

They were smaller than clunky SLR’s (film or digital), which encouraged constant carry. The cliche is, the best camera is the one with you, and I always had my Leica. I had a knack for range finder focus, even with moving subjects at F2, and was happy.

Some ten years passed, life changed and I was about to move countries, though this time I didn’t think my ageing film scanner would survive the trip. With a heavy heart, decided my film days had come to an end. There was absolutely no way I could afford a digital M, so I sold the stable of lenses and two bodies. One of which, a friend of mine still owns, and uses daily, a further ten years on. That camera has been going strong for 29 years and there’s little reason it won’t continue to do so for a further 29, and so on. This is where Lecias reputation comes from, not to mention the long list of well known photographers since 1959 that used a mechanical M to produce their work.

Whom among us hasn’t made the false correlation between great creators and the tools they used. And yet, I can only imagine, that if these greats had started their careers today, they’d be using the best tool available. Not necessarily what someone used 50 years ago.

It’s worth mentioning that I, along with a large number of M users then and now, didn’t own any Leica made lenses. They were just too expensive, and there are third party options, that are as good and sometimes better than what Lecia offers for a fraction of the cost, sometimes a tenth kind of fractions. Though no one has built a successful M mount compatible body, there were a few attempts, but none are still produced.

The fall

Several years and a few cameras later, I found myself in the very fortunate position to be able to afford a contemporary digital M (second hand). The M10-M. I knew better, and yet I told myself it would be just like the old days with my beloved M6 loaded with Tri-X. That the naysayers were likely disgruntled DSLR shooters, or worse yet, phone photographers that had never used a rangefinder and didn’t know how to use a fully manual camera.

The fundamental problem is a digital M is no longer a Swiss watch, it’s a computer in a metal box. A metal box which was designed some 70 years ago for a different medium, with different constraints and kept backwards compatible to ensure the family of lenses would work, and form stay more or less the same. Leica is cramming circuit boards and components made by third parties into this box and then charging multiples of every other camera company for a tool that is less functional, less reliable and with worse quality control. Don’t mistake my criticism for a desire for maximalism, I don’t need or want the new features, nor bells and whistles that most companies push on their users to entice them back onto the wheel of consumption. I cherish a well made tool that does one job really well, I just can’t say that a digital M fits that description.

Leica used its reputation for producing a tool used by working photographers, to produce a luxury good, a status symbol for the wealthy and those seeking validation.

Many wax lyrical about Leica’s “look”, a bizarre statement as historically the “look” was whatever film you loaded into the camera.

People reviewing Lecia’s will justify the high costs with the fact that Lecias are hand made to exacting standards and yet every single model has been plagued with mechanical and software faults, leading to people only having a working copy after multiple returns. No one talks about other electronics being hand made, yet they are in the same way as a Leica, components are produced in fabs and then assembled by hand.

Why does a battery cost $240, or an external charger $600. These items are produced by third parties for Leica, and still cost five to ten times of any other brand.

Why do Leica lenses cost $5,000-10,000? When third party producers sell them for a tenth the cost, for the same small market. Using excellent materials, with similar or better technical specifications.

Or the thumb grips, something that most agree are necessary to make the camera comfortable to hold, a small piece of metal for $311 that renders the flash shoe inoperable. Why?

All that said, I was lucky enough to have a functioning unit, that I used to take many photos I love, over several years. Though there is very little chance it will be around for 29 more. Components fail on digital Ms, requiring their replacement if available, they are no longer repairable in the way their mechanical predecessors were. Never mind that its already difficult to source batteries, and only gets worse with the passage of time.

Reckless consumption

Ultimately I didn’t want to further the madness that pushes so many photographers into thinking they need a Leica. That they haven’t made it unless they can take a selfie of one around their neck or better yet in front of their face. Or to be honest, people discounting the quality of my images because I used a Leica. On more than one occasions someone said “oh, of course your images are good, you’re using such an expensive camera” but as a tool, a digital M is less capable at taking photos than practically every other camera one tenth its cost. And if you are looking at second hand units, probably one twentieth. These days most stand alone cameras are really excellent and surpass what film could do in terms of detail and low light performance and yet the majority of the great photographers we admire did just fine with 35mm film.

The path forward

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest no one needs these kinds of luxury goods. Let luxury be a really cozy jumper, or an exceptional meal. Something made with care by a passionate creator. Status symbols which are really no more luxurious than things a fraction of their cost without the particular branding are a con. If you can’t figure out what to do with all that money burning a hole in your pocket, give it to charity, if don’t know where to start, an organization like givewell can help.

If you grew up in the digital age where every camera was fully automatic, its true that using a fully manual camera with a prime lens will help you better understand photography. Though your existing camera probably has a manual mode, and every company makes a few affordable primes. My favourite being a 40mm, but that’s a story for another time. Or buy a used film or digital camera for a few hundred dollars that will take photos that are generally indistinguishable from those taken on the latest Leica.

I am embracing obscurity, without the need of a status symbol around my neck. I’ve moved to a more mundane camera manufacture, that produces an excellent, reliable workhorse of a tool. I don’t need to baby it, or worry about it crapping out. It gets out my way and lets me capture the things I see. Depending on time of reading, I am selling or already sold all my Leica related kit and will have a large pile of money left over to save and invest in the real luxuries of life, none of which have a brand name on them.

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A relationship came to an end around the same time that a friend convinced me to sign up to a marathon with him. This gave me plenty of free time and something to do with it, not to mention the somewhat bizarre luxury of eating half a kilo of pasta on the couch in my running kit. Along the way, I have made mistakes, learned from some of them and am here to tell the tale, many years into my running journey.

Did wrong

• Speed

• Arms

• Circles

• Roads

Learned to do better

• Listened to my body

• Focused on the breath

• Alternated direction

• Ran on trails

Got lucky with

• Barefoot running

Lessons

Speed

Running is fun, running fast is more fun, at least in the short run. Going too far and too fast too soon is the single most common mistake people make when embarking on a running journey. It’s a combination of having externally set expectations of what is an OK distance to run: people think they need to run 5km or 10km, arbitrary numbers that sound nice but are fictions of our imaginations. As well as externally set expectations of what is an OK pace to run, fast, or at least faster than that old dude jogging in front of us. Pace, coupled with distance are entirely personal, and shouldn’t be tied to any external expectations, beyond what you planned to achieve based on a reasonable ramp up plan.

The short version, run slower than seems reasonable at first, starting with shorter distances.

The best approach is to rely on the zone system to pace your effort, and ramp up distance ~10% a week. The simplest form of the zone system is the talking test, zones 1-5.

• Z1 Rest - Can hold a full conversation

• Z2 Recovery - Still hold a full conversation

• Z3 Tempo - Incomplete sentences

• Z4 Threshold - Odd word or two

• Z5 Anaerobic - Talking is hard

If you have a fitness tracker that can tell you what zone you are in you can be a little more precise with sticking to your zone, especially if you are running alone and don’t want to talk to yourself the whole time. For the first couple weeks and ideally months you want to do all your runs comfortably in Z2. This will build your base fitness. Then you can start to regularly introduce Z3, and push into Z4 and Z5 for focused training.

You really should do more Z2 then at first feels comfortable, not physically but mentally. Mentally you will want to go far and fast, sticking to Z2, at least at the start will not permit that. Over time you will be able to go faster at Z2 and as a result will go further in the same period.

Arms

People do all sorts of different things with their hands and arms. Generally they should be at your sides and not be karate chopping the air in front of your face. Keeping them swinging around 45 degrees, without crossing your chest allows your chest to be open wide and ensure maximum lung capacity. Pumping them any harder is just wasting effort, unless you really are climbing a steep incline, in which case it can help to provide momentum. Focusing on optimising breathing, and slowing down breathing lets you run more relaxed and as a result better. Letting your arms loosely swing by your hips, allows them to be more in sync with your breathing, rather than being in kung fu boxer mode.

Circles

In addition to camber, there is also the problem of a loop. Loops are great in principle as you can ensure unique scenery and a predictable route. The problem is, humans being creatures of habits we tend to do loops in the same direction, we spend much of the run, and each time we do our regular loop turning in the same direction. Further contributing to the imbalance caused by the road. It may just be dumb luck or a feature of the slope but I tend to find myself running clockwise on right sloping roads and counter clockwise on left leaning ones, this makes sense from a car sticking to the road surface perspective but is unnecessary when running.

If roads are the only option for you, there are two strategies to reduce the strain they cause. Run closer to the centre of the road, as it is typically more flat than the edges. And varying direction every other run will help distribute the load across sides of your body, you can also look at figure 8 loops that provide variability of turning direction though they are harder to ensure a perfect balance of side so even with those direction should be varied.

Roads

Roads are designed primarily for 4 wheeled vehicles, which also support other numbers of wheels. They are also designed to avoid water collecting or running down them, as a result they tend to have a crown which is tallest at the centre and slopes downwards to the sides, alternatively it is sloped from one side to the other. Either way, they are slopped. Due to this slope or camber, we tend to walk or run on a slope, with one leg more extended than the other and hips uneven. If we alternate sides to run against traffic, we are running both ways, slopped to the same side. After multiple runs, always on the same slope you will most likely develop some sort of pain or injury due to this imbalance.

Though my personal choice is to try and avoid roads all together and run on trails, they aren’t a panacea and you can still suffer from the loop problem but the slope tends to be more dynamic and variable which helps avoid over straining a single side. Trails are also typically a lot more fun to run on, not to mention generally softer than running on asphalt.

Barefoot

Mcdougall’s book “Born to Run” had just come out and shoe companies were responding with minimalist designs, so I got a lucky with timing. It would have been a lot harder to start barefoot style running a few years earlier or later as big shoes are fully back in vogue. I suspect I would have eventually gotten there as I tend to gravitate to the more minimal forms of most things. E.g. I’ve ridden a fixed gear bike for some 20 years, and could fit my whole life into two bags till relatively recently.

Minimal shoes or fully barefoot running, forces you to strengthen your feet and improve your technique, otherwise its bloody uncomfortable. If you’ve never done it before, start small, really small. The last 100m of your run home, do that for a week, then perhaps double that distance each week for a few weeks in “barefoot style” shoes. Fully barefoot, should be taken even a bit slower as you need to literally toughen your feet by building up thicker skin.

In my time as a runner, I’ve had two injuries, just two. Both due to running too much without enough ramp up and forgetting some of these proceeding lessons; one in the first few months, whilst still figuring things out and the other a few months ago after doing a 21km trail run with 2km of elevation at pace, with hardly any running for the proceeding six months, due to life getting in the way. That is with years and years of doing over 60km a week of running.

Twenty years on, crossing a milestone in life, I’ve decided its time for a change.

From October 17th 2025, for 365 days, I will add a single photo everyday, taken the day before. All images will be in colour and taken with a ~40mm lens.

A record of my life as it happens. Posting this particular letter a month into the project, some patterns have emerged. With two children, my week day involves a commute to school, the world around my home office and the odd errand. While the weekends tend to be packed with child led adventure.

Beyond the chaos of home, other themes have already started to develop. Reflecting my position as an outsider in Southern Africa. I intend to post each new image as a note and as other bodies of work coalesce, to write more on them.

Whilst my main vehicle for artistic expression is the camera, I don’t define myself as a photographer. Rather as a curious mind in a chaotic world. As such, I think about, and plan to write about, a wider array of topics.

The complete project will end up on my website, you can follow along there and I will be posting the daily photo on here under notes

Best,

sbr