I recently had the pleasure of helping out on another Leica Akademie workshop. While this one was a much smaller scale compared to the workshop I did with Maclay Heriot, it was still quite exciting for me.

The workshop was themed around teaching people the history and how to use Leica M cameras. I took a similar one online during COVID lockdowns, but the real reason I was excited was the milestone it represented for me. My first experience with Leica Akademie was in 2020, where I took a low light photography workshop run by Kristian Dowling(KD), so being able to help him run a workshop was something really special for me.

I’m really happy that Leica are starting to offer some shorter, lower cost workshops for people to be able to get involved in the comminuty who might not be in a position to afford some of the more involved workshops. Looking at where I was back in 2020, there were many Akademie workshops I would love to have attended, but couldn’t afford.

The workshop started with some drinks and a chat, followed by an extended presentation from KD, going through the history of the M series and some information on how it works.

After the presentation, everyone headed out for some street photography to implement the skills they had just learned.

Street photographer using a telephoto zoom

We ran into someone doing street photography with a 150-600mm zoom lens, which caught me by surprise. All of the interesting shots nearby seemed too close for a zoom that range, but hopefully they got some they were happy with.

We mainly stuck together as a group for this one, as many of the students had not done a lot of street photography before.

On the way, we came across a cute frenchie:

We headed to Chinatown, where we all split up for half an hour to take photos in the area:

Akademie student photographing people in Chinatown

On the way to a cool patch of light I saw, I came across a spooky looking, dimly lit alleyway, which I just had to explore:

After meeting up, we then headed over to Darling Harbour, where there was an anime convention called ‘Smash Con’ going on. I didn’t head in because I got distracted by some cute dogs:

The light was super harsh, so we had to expose for the highlights, which was actually great for the students as it gave them a difficult situation to tackle with us there to provide help.

Everyone headed back to Leica Store Sydney afterwards to share their experiences and catch up. I like to think they all enjoyed the workshop. It had a lot of meaning for me, as four years ago when I took my first Akademie workshop, actually being able to help run a workshop wasn’t something I ever thought I would be able to do - especially with the instructor who ran my first one. It was a great pleasure to meet and work with KD, whose years of experience helped make the workshop a smooth running, excellent learning experience for everyone involved.

I’m excited to see what other new Akademie workshops will be coming out next!

Helping run another workshop with the Leica Akademie

Photographing a live concert with the Leica Akademie