It had been a long time since I’d clam­bered into the woods, dirt under hands and scrap­ing knees, to make that metic­u­lously framed photo. The more found-and-street pho­tog­ra­phy I do, the less of the compose-recompose-recompose-again process I had done. Last week­end was just such an oppor­tu­nity. Walk­ing in Percy Warner Park there was up on a hill a large tree that had fallen across another tree and, over time, twisted away and set­tled on the ground. In the future it will prob­a­bly be a nurse log for other growth. Unfor­tu­nately it was a good was up that hill and too far for any lens to get it from the road. It was a very cloudy day mak­ing hand­held shots tricky at best, and this being under cover of trees I had no choice except to scram­ble up car­ry­ing my tri­pod to setup for the shot.

Shoot­ing with the Leica M3 at 35mm can be tricky. On the tech­ni­cal detail side, this was made with the Leica M3 with a 35mm f/2.8 lens. Expired T-Max 400 shot at 200, f/11 at 1/2 sec­ond. With that 35mm lens there is an attach­ment to the viewfinder to ensure proper fram­ing, but when the cam­era is low to the ground in an already uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tion, it’s tough to ensure that the setup is just the way you want it. With a lit­tle time and patience, that part came together.

Next was meter­ing and set­ting the shut­ter. Get­ting the expo­sure down is thank­fully a breeze with my hand­held meter. Since it was a long expo­sure, a self-timer was going to be used. With the Leica there is a strange lit­tle half-winder on the front that you set, trip to start, and then when the winder fin­ishes it fires the shut­ter. It takes a few tries to trust it — espe­cially as the winder can run whether or not the expo­sure has already been tripped by the shut­ter button.

But when all was done, the photo was made and can now be shared.