My first Leica was an M4; bought from Alfredo Olivera (Alfredo's Cameras) in New Orleans. That must have been around 1970. Alfredo kindly converted my plain Jane silver model to all-black using the same powder coating technique he was employing on parts of his Ferrari Dino restoration project he had undertaken in a garage next door to his camera shop.
In subsequent years I acquired a number of other Leicas including an M2, M3, another M4 and even (again from Alfredo) an infamous M5.
I moved away from the Crescent City in the 1980s and eventually ended up here in Washington, DC as a Capitol Hill and White House reporter/photojournalist. This -- sadly -- necessitated the one-by-one sale of my Leicas in order to purchase the requisite and insanely expensive digital cameras needed to pursue my vocation. The expenditures were not aided by the fact that the digital devices would become obsolete every couple of years.
At any rate, I've now retired from the DC bedlam and have gone back to basics -- and film -- with the recently adopted IIIF body and 5cm f3.5 Elmar pictured here. And, I am having a ball! I'm especially excited at the prospect of a trip next month which will take me to Berlin and Hamburg, among other places, where I will be able to realize my long held wish to shoot with a Leica in Germany.
It's good to be "home".
