Daniel Maissan | Streets of India

Photo © Daniel Maissan-All Rights Reserved

I recently was directed to Daniel Maissan's A Man With A Leica blog in which he writes of his love for the Leica Monochrom whilst photographing across the length and breadth of India. He tells us that he was tempted to use his M9 to capture the powerful colors of the country and its streets, but when he did, he ended up converting the photographs to black & white with Silver Efex Pro.

As I chose to do during my workshop during Kolkata's Durga Puja in October 2011, the absence of color from his photographs made in India frequently make them more compelling, and less distracting...of course, it all depends on what's being photographed.

Also take a look at Daniel's Streets of Old Delhi (which include a few photographs made in Varanasi and Amritsar) which are mostly in monochrome. His imagery is wonderful, but the one I really found fantastic is of the woman in a white sari (possibly a widow) on the banks of the Ganges.

I like his gallery's layout...large photographs with a horizontal scroll bar. I've read somewhere that this is the minimalist web gallery layout preferred by photo editors/buyers as it's simple and very effective.

Daniel Maissan is a freelance photographer based in Haarlem, The Netherlands, who's in the process of exploring the transition from a DSLR camera to a Leica M9 (and a Monochrome) with only a 35 mm Summicron f2.0 and a 75 mm Summicron f2.0 lens.