Thinking About Shooting With My Leica Again

Note: this is a 2024 reflection, posted for the archive. More a note to myself than anything else.

Hey everyone, Romel here. This one is less a guide and more me thinking out loud. My Leica has been sitting on the shelf for longer than I'd like to admit, and lately I keep catching myself looking at it and feeling a little guilty. So I'm writing this partly to convince myself to pick it back up.

The thing about shooting with the Leica is that it's the opposite of how I do almost everything else. My whole day is fast. Code, edits, streams, the phone always within reach to grab a quick shot of whatever's in front of me. The Leica refuses to play along. It makes me slow down, think about the frame, set things deliberately, and actually be present for the photo instead of firing off twenty and sorting it out later. That friction is the entire point, and it's exactly what I've been missing.

I think part of why it ended up on the shelf is that the convenient option always wins in the moment. My phone is right there, it's good enough, and "good enough" quietly becomes the only thing I ever reach for. But the photos I actually care about, the ones I come back to, almost never came from the convenient choice. They came from the days I decided to carry the real camera and pay attention.

So the plan, if I'm being honest with myself, is small. Not a big photography comeback, not a project, not a content series. Just put the Leica back in the bag and bring it along. Take it on a walk, bring it when we go somewhere, let it earn its place again by being used instead of admired.

If you've gone through the same thing, picked a hobby back up after letting it drift, I'd love to hear what got you going again. Drop it in the comments or find me on Discord.