About
 My real name is Brian, I'm a Scot originally from Edinburgh but raised in Glasgow. I have lived in London since 1974, and with my partner since 1984. Why spylaw4 as a nickname? To cut a long story short it is simply derived from an Edinburgh address that has personal connections, and it seemed as good as anything else! Although I was a keen photographer in my youth, my interest lapsed as other hobbies, to say nothing of work, limited my time and diverted me away from photography. Some years ago, having spent a seemingly endless lifetime "harnessing the forces of nature in the service of man", I was offered an early retirement package. I leapt at the chance and then re-discovered and actively resurrected my interest in photography which, apart from holiday snapping, had been dormant for far too long. Ignoring the multitude of large black DSLRs, I dipped a toe into the Leica world in early 2006 by buying a Digilux 2. Little did I realise what would ensue! I quickly found that like most of life's pleasures, Leicas are not only expensive, but highly addictive! Or should that be phrased the other way round? So the 'bug' bit and I progressed quite rapidly to the use once more of rangefinder cameras and ultimately the Leica M8 digital camera. I prefer to use available light rather than use a flash. I find that despite the excellent color images this camera produces, I am gradually being more and more drawn to black & white (B&W) images, based primarily on the M8's in-camera image processor, but certainly not excluding conversions from the RAW image file. All images, colour or B&W, are processed using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5, with a couple of very useful plug-ins. As of Friday the 13th (!) November I no longer have my M8, but have "progressed" to the full-frame M9, introduced by Leica on 9/9/09.
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