Starting out as a young photographer in the early 1990s, the camera to have, if you were even remotely serious about photojournalism, was a Leica, specifically a Leica M rangefinder. At the age of 20, working as a printers’ artist, taking home £160 a week, any Leica was way out of my budget, then, and for the rest of the decade. 
Things changed in 1999; I had a more lucrative job and managed to purchase and put together my dream camera bag – A Leica M6 and M4p, with 35mm and 50mm Summicron lenses, all stashed neatly into the ubiquitous Domke F2 canvas bag. Everything except the bag was second-hand, but it still managed to push my credit card uncomfortably close to its five-grand limit. Eighteen months later, whilst holidaying in France, I foolishly hid the bag under some coats in the back of our rental car while we went kayaking on the Dordogne River. When I returned, the car had been broken into and the Leicas were gone, never to be seen again. I have to admit, I cried when I found out I wasn’t insured. 
Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century; I’ve used many cameras during that time, but never Leica. The longing for another has always been there…then along came the Q.

When the original Q was released in 2015, I was shooting most of my projects on film, so its importance sailed under my radar. Four years later came the Q2, which remained dismissed; however, a year after that, the Q2 Monochrom was born—a high-quality camera with the searingly sharp 28mm f/1.7 ASPH lens. Take my money! Except I didn’t have the money until a year ago.
I’ve actually owned two Q2Ms since last September; the first one I ordered the day after my birthday, but I got buyer’s remorse before it had even arrived. On the day it was delivered, I sent it straight back without even opening the box. Within a couple of days, a wave of regret washed over me. I called Wex Photo to get them to send it back, but they’d already sold it. The wait for another shipment to arrive was excruciating.
Specifications, megapixel count, and any other performance-related data are, to me, unimportant, so I won’t bother sharing them. Oh, by the way, the Q2M only records images in black & white, monochrome, the clue’s in the name. Some photographers will never understand this concept; that’s okay. This Leica is a very high-quality, uncomplicated tool, similar in many ways to the M rangefinder cameras I so lusted after as a youth. I set the ISO to auto, manually adjust the aperture and shutter speeds, and focus manually using focus peaking as an aid to my questionable eyesight. The only things I then have to worry about are pointing the lens in the right direction and pressing the shutter release at the right time.

All the images here were made in the last year using the Leica Q2 Monochrom – it goes everywhere with me – all over the UK, out on fishing boats off the Isle of Man, Canada, Japan, and last year’s election day in the US. Also, I learned a valuable lesson years ago – it’s fully insured.