Daily Inspiration #443 by Darek Meyer

September 6, 2013 Daily Inspiration 16

Hi Steve,

My name is Darek, I`m Polish, living in Asia for couple of years.

I`ve been visiting your web page since December last year. From the moment I had Leica Monochrome in my hands for the first time 🙂 Then of course I was looking for a word in the Internet about it, which led me to your review of this piece of art.

My daily work is all about travelling. I`ve reached this scary moment, when majority of flight attendants of different asian airlines know me by name. I had my DSLR, I`ve bought some lenses still last year – but I`ve found that I use these very seldom.

I`ve started my serch for perfect camera. Perfect for me, where portability is one of most important features. Finally I`ve found it. No, not Monochrome. It is NinjaBrick. Ricoh GRD4.

Lots have been said about it. I`m not going to add anything more to it, except one thing. Recently I was curious enough to try new GR. And actually, I have mixed feelings about it. The best comparison I came with, is that GR is like a new, young, pretty girfriend. And GRD4 is an old friend, who will never let you down. You can add rest of the story to it :-).

With time, I`ve learned one thing: the camera is not that important. You have to feel comfortable with if, you have to like it, and then everything works well. At the end, what matters, comes from you and from the way you see the world, the way you want to capture it. I`m at the beginning of this journey. I enjoy discussions with one of polish photographers, Robert Kresa, http://robertkresa.com You`ll not hear from him which camera does he use (except it is small and pink 😉 ) He stands for his photos, not his gear. And I like this approach a lot.

I`m sending you 3 shots.

First one, with the birds, I took in Ho Chi Minh City, VietNam. On the trip to factory, we`ve stopped in modern shopping mall for a coffee. I had a walk around. When I looked up, the only thing I could do was to point the camera and shoot. This was astonishing moment. Second one is from small fishing village, Sumur, West of Java, Indonesia. We went for 3 days fishing trip, starting from this place. Every morning, they have fish market there. Small place, very crowded, very intense, which gets empty after an hour. This is sunrise over Java.

GRD4 is also my companion, when I walk the streets of asian cities at night. Small, black, doesn`t bring any attention. And I can freeze the life as it is – passing by, not disturbing, almost invisible, letting the life go by. Like on 3rd shot, from Singapore.

All exif data there.

Hope you enjoy these shots – more can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/meyer_59/

Thanks for your commitment to run your page, and share all these excellent ideas and photographs

Best Regards

Darek

birds

sunrise

night cut

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16 Comments

  2. What can I say that hasn’t been said already? Darek knows what he’s doing photographically, and it shows. Great images, all of them.

  3. Steve, thanks for posting! Big, and very nice surprise.

    Dears, thanks again for your comments. Your words mean a lot to me, and I hope you`ll still enjoy my new work!
    best regards
    Darek

  4. Darek

    Thank you for you contribution to Steve’s page. Like you – I’ve been following this website for sometime. The difference between you and I is this: that you have submitted 3 shots, and you have introduced us to your world and your life.

    Thank you for that.

    Your images are very telling: your first shot is indeed like an Escher (thank you Ramanan!) where it’s tough to tell the direction of flight. The second only compounds the observation you made in your narrative: you like to be invisible – and your last shot demonstrates that different perspectives illuminate different images.

    Cheers!

    • JC,
      it is indeed how I like to be – invisible. Transparent. But I know I`m not there yet. Still on the way. Thanks for your words!

  6. Thank you for story and pictures. The birds silhouette is superb – a marvellous mixture of abstract and real. IMO the other two are really interesting motifs but would be better as images if the shadows were not so heavy.

    • Thanks John. On the darks – it was Araki who said, that blacks better leave as blacks. I admit that the selection I made is not perfect. But on flickr you can find other shots, not that dard, and even some color 🙂 !

  8. “With time, I`ve learned one thing: the camera is not that important. You have to feel comfortable with it, you have to like it, and then everything works well. At the end, what matters, comes from you and from the way you see the world, the way you want to capture it.”

    Well said Darek!

  10. Love the first one too, nice capture!

    I fully get what you say about the GRD IV too, as fantastic as the new APS-C GR is there is something lacking when compared to previous GRD’s. It is not a natural successor in many ways. I’ve recently sold my GR and re-bought a GRD III for peanuts, it fits my needs better than the GR and that still surprises me a bit. Don’t get me wrong mind, the Ricoh GR is an amazing powerhouse of a camera and of course YMMV.

  11. Nice work! I really like the birds overhead…
    The photographer from Poland… I think it’s a pink Leica m8/9?? Who cares? I couldn’t tell till I saw his bio-pic. Anyway, keep shooting, I am camera-less right now and it is driving me insane!

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