Red Dot

My Leica M6 sits in the seat next to me on a flight to Nashville in 2019.

Nothing gold can stay

I sold my Leica. As I write this sentence, Jenny is home from work with minor contractions – she is pregnant with our second child – and my beloved Leica M6 is traveling to its new home in Pennsylvania.

Hello, goodbye.

I don’t often get sentimental over objects. But I’ve spent the past couple nights thinking about that Leica and why I sold it. And I don’t really have an answer.

I remind myself about the continuing rise of film prices, and the impracticality of shooting film, and how the money gained from the sale (double what I paid in 2016) could be better put to use. I remind myself about the last roll of film I shot and developed and how I didn’t enjoy it much. But I think the real answer – the honest answer – is change.

All things change. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes you don’t realize how far from the shore you’ve come until you turn back and look.

I’ve been a photographer for more than half my life, and the only constant in that time has been change. I’m currently focused on documenting my kids growing up.

More than a year ago I bought a Fujifilm X100V. It’s not the biggest or the best, it doesn’t shoot film and it lacks that iconic red dot. But it’s the tool I need for the work I’m trying to make.

I miss the Leica – more as an object than as a tool. But nothing is safe. Nothing is forever. And change in one direction is impossible without letting go in the other.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost