Dog Days

This is probably one of my favorite all time photos of Moby and Tango together. It fills my heart every time I look at it.

I've been experimenting more lately with manual focus lenses. I have three from Voigtlander: 50mm f/1.0, 35mm f/1.2, and a 21mm f/1.4. All of these lenses have unique character (IMO) and fantastic color rendering with little to no post-processing required... Which is my strong preference. Fades and other filters will eventually look dated, but natural colors and skin tones will never go out of style.

These manual focus lenses are all a long-term play towards investing in the Leica M system. For now, I use them on my Nikon Z8 and have been getting decent results with focus peaking (zooming way in to grab focus, then taking the shot). I've always thought the Leica hype about slowing down and being more intentional with your work was a cute gimmick, but wildly impractical for everyday shooting. I still mostly think that, but I do think there's at least a little merit to the idea as well.

Point of fact, you're going to miss shots a fast auto-focus would've helped you shoot reflexively. You could also make the same argument for well-honed zone focusing, but is going to have diminishing returns with fast-moving subjects – like dogs, birds, vehicles, etc.

But all of that is walking right past the universal truth of

The best camera is the one you have with you.

To that point, this shot never would've happened if I hadn't left my camera sitting on the coffee table in our living room. I did a little wake-and-bake on Memorial Day, so I was sitting on the couch playing video games when the dogs settled like this. Camera was there, I eyeballed the distance and fired off a few frames. Once I had Moby's attention, she started howling at me to come play. Complete happenstance that I had a camera ready to capture the moment.