“I couldn’t believe how simple his Lieca was. The Lieca body had no rewinding leaver. To advance the film he had to manually turn the little round knob twice on the camera. There was no focusing ring on the lens either. He had to judge the distance himself and choose the setting on the lens, while capturing his famous “decisive moments” in crowded places. Later on he explained to me that this was all done by choice. Over the years he had simplified the technical part of photography to suit his unobtrusive shooting style and still create a technically perfect photograph. For instance, he judged the light by eye, although he carried a small light meter in his pants pocket. Since he mostly shot in shaded areas he set his F stop at 5.6 or 8 and shutter speed at 1/60th to 1/125th of a second, so he could quickly pay attention to his subject matter. He made it clear that, “technique is not so important to me, but people and their activities are”. He said, “Think about the photograph before and after, but not during. The secret is to take your time but also to be very quick”. In other words there was to be no cropping of the image later, no dodging or other tricks used in printing. The image captured on film had to stand on its own merits.”

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