Rob Skeoch

Streets of Toronto with the Leica 0 I've been taking photos on the street for the past few years but in 2014 I decided to try something a bit different. After taking a History of Photography course I purchased a Leica 0 camera and used that for all my street work. The Leica 0 is an interesting camera. It's a remake of the original Leica that was designed around 1920 and never really brought to market. Around 2000 Leica went back to the original plans and made a collectable version of the camera called the Leica 0. I was able to buy one of these on eBay and since I'm not a collector decided to shoot with it. The hardest part of using the camera is the lack of a viewfinder, you have to hold the camera out in front of you and use the gun-sight frame. It's very hit and miss. The camera doesn't have any focus aids like a modern rangefinder, you just guess the distance and set it on the lens. For portrait work I would measure the distance from the camera to the subject with a tape measure I bought at a fabric store. Focusing is a slow process. Setting the aperture was rather straight forward although the aperture numbers are not the same as the ones we currently use, but easy enough to set on the front of the lens. Shutter speeds were a pain to set. It didn't really have shutter speeds but "slit widths" the distance in mm between the first and second shutter curtain. So you had numbers like 5 or 2 which meant 5mm or 2mm between curtains. You could only change the speeds while winding the film. You would wind half way to the next frame and then stop and adjust the speeds and then continue to wind. It's not possible to change speeds without firing a frame off. One of the things I found most frustrating with the camera was the need to replace the lens cap when winding the film. If you didn't cover the lens you fogged the frame you just shot plus the next one. I lost a number of frames because I was trying to get off another shot and wound before replacing the cap. Shooting with this camera gave me a greater understanding of the work flow the early photographers were using but I'm glad that Leica continued to develop the idea and added a viewfinder and easier to use controls over the next few years. It was great to shoot with the camera and it sure was small for a full-frame film camera but once the year was over I put the camera back on eBay to allow another history of photography student a turn with the Leica 0.

Searching for China The large cities in China are some of the most modern, sophisticated places in the world. When I was there in 2009 I was searching for a less complicated world that some of the citizens live in. These photos are from the markets and rural areas I visited outside of the major cities.