We welcome you to Leicapalooza!
Here’s the 2026 ’Palooza program:
FRIDAY, July 17th
11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Visit the Tamarkin Camera Showroom & Leica Boutique to see the new Leica SL3‑P and play Leica games to win door prizes and bragging rights!
ALL DAY LONG
Play Leica games to win door prizes and bragging rights!
Think you know Leica product code words? Play Leica Scrabble to win prizes.
How fast can you focus the 50 Noctilux? Get all 3 shots razor sharp to win.
Take The Barnack Quiz to see how well you know Leica history.
Play “Stuck or Unstuck,” our most challenging game yet…
Free, no reservation required.
11 a.m. — Noon
Leica Ambassador and SL camera professional Gajan Balan (@gajanbalan) shows us the new Leica SL3‑P!
Join us for a hands-on experience featuring Leica’s newest powerhouse camera: the Leica SL3‑P. Whether you are looking to elevate your street photography or want to see how this gear handles extreme environments, this event is designed to provide a full overview on Leica’s fastest camera to date.
Gajan Balan is the consummate pro — there is no one better to show us around this new Leica Camera…
Gajan Balan is a photographer and director based in Toronto. For him, cameras are passports and photography is time travel. His visuals are an exercise in world-building that moves across portraiture, fashion, street, and documentary. This approach has earned him multiple awards, gallery exhibitions, publications, and a global ambassadorship with Leica Camera. His time is now divided between crafting meaningful visuals for commercial clients and highlighting humanistic stories that draw deep inspiration from his culture and heritage. Quite simply, his purpose is to travel the world, create compelling stories, and look to inspire the next generation of creatives.
“Cameras are passports and photography is time travel. My visuals are an exercise in world-building that moves across portraiture, fashion, street, and documentary …. crafting meaningful visuals for commercial clients and highlighting humanistic stories that draw deep inspiration from my culture and heritage. Quite simply, my purpose is to travel the world, create compelling stories, and look to inspire the next generation of creatives.”
Read more about Gajan here, and on his website, here.
Gajan Balan
12:30 — 3 p.m.
Gajan and our model take us on a guided photo walk where we’ll see Gajan’s process with the SL camera in action and learn best practices and tips-and-tricks for compelling images.
FRIDAY, July 17th
4 – 7 p.m.
Join The Rangefinder Gallery at Tamarkin Camera to welcome Leica Photographer Dean Hinnant, who opens his first solo photo exhibition in Chicago, “ONE/250”
Browse Dean’s images and enjoy refreshments. Dean speaks about his process and his images.
Free, no reservation required.
Dean’s work showcases the range of Midwestern moods, from the mundane to the moving, in colors that affirm the beauty of our world, and the Midwest in particular. Based in Nebraska, Dean’s travels tell us the story of the modern American myth, invoking the romanticism of the Old West to suburban encounters along the country’s highways.
Aptly named, this exhibit connects this year, the 250th year of the United States, with the camera shutter, documenting and celebrating the “grit, grace, and fleeting beauty of everyday existence” as Dean writes. Projects such as Some American Dream, Blood, The Sacred Ordinary and A Place For Us showcase the familiar, the familial and found with a distinct and colorful style, reminiscent of both Winogrand and Marion Post Wolcott.
@dean_hinnant
deanhinnant.com
Free, no reservation required.
SATURDAY, July 18th
10 a.m. — ~1:30 p.m.
Photo Walk with Gaston Shutters – free!
Gaston Shutters (@gastonshutters) tells us about his style of street photography and portraits and shares his process, then we hit the streets! Gaston leads us on a photo walk – buckle up – Gaston is a lot of fun to shoot with…
Leica On Loan will be here, too! We’ll offer a limited array of Leica products to test on our walk. Reserve your Leica now! They’ll go quick, so don’t mess around.
Free, no reservation for the talk & walk required.
2:30 – 5:00 p.m.
The Leica Adventure Continues… Your Best Image Workshop with Gaston Shutters.
SOLD OUT
Gaston shows us his images and his monochrome workflow, and how you can make the most of the images you capture “in post.” We’ll use Adobe Lightroom together, and learn some best practices and tip-and-tricks.
Join us for this hands-on post processing workshop, guaranteed to get you up to speed on the best practices, and full of Gaston’s recommendations for better image processing.
Bring your laptop and 10 images (maybe from today’s photo walk!) and we’ll help you get ready to print your best image. Receive a discount on local photo printing service from Lux Photo Lab.
This 2:30 p.m. The Leica Adventure Continues Workshop costs $175 per person and is limited to 10 participants - SOLD OUT
SUNDAY, July 19th
Noon – 3 p.m.
Coffee, Curate & Collaborate with Emilio Lanzagorta of Lux Photo Lab and Dan Tamarkin at Tamarkin Camera.
Learn about how to choose which image to print, and what are the considerations. Emilio takes us through the process. Then, we’ll talk about your images and the curating process generally. We curate your images together with the group, and learn about what makes a compelling image, what galleries & editors want to see, and how to find the narrative in your portfolio or photo series.
SOLD OUT
…but you can still attend to see what it’s all about!
Question? Comments? Rants or Raves?
Call 312−642−2255 or email now.
Join the Leica Akademie at Tamarkin Camera for a weekend with fine art photographer and director Mark de Paola!
The workshop with focus on capturing portraiture stories. Dissecting together the anatomy of character and plot development, as well as exploring both the literal and abstract possibilities of crafting story with photographs, students will come away with at a minimum of two distinct narrative sequences of photographs.
Set against Chicago’s iconic urban facades, you will work on assignment to adapt each assigned character to your own authored story. This masterclass is catered to photographers both beginning their artistic journey as well as those more advanced in the medium. Mark will explore how implementing and understanding how sequencing a narrative applies to many photographic genres and is critical to creating a completed body of work.
De Paola is long known for his fashion and fine artwork that has been revered as portraiture first, always striving for the most authentic and truthful essence and expression from a collaboration. This understanding of providing a space of safety and freedom in a creative space is a critical topic of discussion that each student will also explore with Mark and each portraiture collaborator.
Do not miss this unique opportunity to join Mark de Paola, Leica Akademie USA and Tamarkin Camera this October in Chicago!
You are sure to come away with powerful and poignant photographs, reunite with your own unlocked sense of play and story, and immerse further into discovering your truest unique photographic style and connection in portraiture.
$1,799
You can learn more — and sign up — here.
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