All rights to this photograph is reserved the photographer

Of the entire workforce at 1515 Broadway in the heart of Times Square, I’m pretty sure I was the only guy who carried a Leica M with him every single day. Every morning commute, every lunch hour, every evening commute. One afternoon, I caught this fellow checking himself out in the reflected doors of Toys’R'Us. I leaned against a lamp post, composed and pre-focused, and waited for him to pass me. When he did, I fired blind while watching his face. In the process, I shot a self-portrait, too. Both of us caught in the act!

Shot with my Leica M7 & Voigtlander Heliar Classic 50mm f2. Kodak Tri-X. ISO 400. I always shoot with the M7 paired with my 35mm Summilux-M f1.4, pre aspherical, but it was being repaired when this image was taken. I think a Leica M paired with a 35mm lens is as close to perfect as it will ever get. And the “Leica glow” of the Summilux is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Why I use a Leica:
I got hooked on photography the day I snuck my parents’ Kodak Disk camera into middle school to photograph my friends. Since then, I’ve never been without a camera. The Leica M, in my view, is unparalleled – and once I discovered them, I wanted one desperately. I finally scraped the money together and bought mine used from a great local dealer. With uncompromising mechanics, an unwavering adherence to a traditional design that works – and an utterly discrete silence in the field, the Leica M is a mechanical work of art in an age of disposable throwaways. This camera is something to be broken in and lived with, and used as intended. You should age with it. I imagine this is how a musician feels about an instrument.

Also, I could totally knock down a bear with it.

Be sure to visit Christopher Butler’s Leica M7 set on Flickr, and to add him on Twitter.

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