Yesterday I really wanted to do some street photography using the Leica 21mm Super Elmar. It's a great lens for this because the depth of field is so great at f8. Who needs auto focus when you can use a lens like this using hyperfocal distance and the depth of field scale on the lens. On this little lens everything from 3ft. to infinity is sharp at f8. So before I left I set up a test in my living room to see what was what using this method. So I tried different distances and it turned out that focusing at five feet was the sweet spot. That meant that the previous equation of 3ft. to infinity worked very well. I headed down to Dock Square in Rockport to see if I could find some people. What I ran into was a great surprise. The Rotary Club was holding a reading of the Declaration of Independence with everyone dressed in colonial attire. What a great opportunity! The crowd started to gather, townies, tourists, little kids, older folks, great photographic opportunities everywhere. I started out using the camera on aperture priority. This seemed to work well shooting from the hip and also framing images with my analog viewfinder on top of the camera. The Leica M-P 240 was in it's element not many people were paying attention to me. But the biggest problem was me. I shot the event like a news photographer so people did notice me and in some of the frames I had people looking at me. Some of the people there knew me as well so they were aware of what I was doing.

I did focus every once and a while and that was fine but the most interesting images were made using the camera in street photography mode. Here are some of the images from yesterdays shoot.

Rockport 4thThe crowd started to grow from a small group to a very large one as people were called to the town square. Rockport 4thThe Constitution was handed out so people could read along as it was read out loud. Rockport 4thWhen you know the people everyone is aware you are making photos at some point. Shot from the hip notice the lower angle. Rockport 4thBefore they started everyone was doing something different. This woman was texting while her kids were playing with their flags. Rockport 4thThe crowd is notified that the reading will begin. Rockport 4thAs the Constitution is read folks were encouraged to yell Huzzah when something good about the colonies was read. One woman followed up. Rockport 4thYou never know when Uncle Sam will make an appearance.

Rockport 4thThis young man found a spot in the tree at Dock Sq. and was kind of listening. Rockport 4thThe guy with the pitch fork had an interesting look on his face and so did the woman looking my way as the Constitution was read. Rockport 4thA hardy clap as the reading is over and the pitch fork is raised. Rockport 4thThis woman was giving me the stare or was she just waiting to hit me up for a donation for our town fireworks in August.