Holga Randomness

As I start on my final project for my studies at UArts, I think it's a good idea to put these older toy camera images up. I've been using various "toy" cameras for years; always searching for one tool or another to get me the mood I'm looking for in a particular type of imagery. I keep coming back to my Holgas. I started using Holgas in early 2006 because of an emulation assignment I was given in school. I chose Keith Carter as my model, but needed a camera that would afford me some kind of out of the ordinary selective focus. I couldn't afford a camera with movements; I had just purchased a Hasselblad and there was simply no money for anything else. So I did some research and came up with the Holga. The look was different, but the mood was very similar to what I saw in Carter's images. I can't do a real emulation of anyone anyhow. My work has to be my own, so it was a relief to find something similar....but different for that assignment. Problem was, I fell in love with the look I got out of my Holga. I had just blown a huge amount of money on my Hassy, but it was my Holga I wanted to use. I even went to a great deal of trouble to make glass filters for my Hassy to get a similar look, but it just wasn't the same. It killed me to leave that beautiful Swedish camera on the shelf, but I did it and went plastic for a while. That was just the beginning. I now have three Holgas, a couple of wide angle 35mm plastic cameras, a few TLRs from the old Lomo factory, various old lenses for some old 4x5s, and a Diana. I print in old processes as well as digital. I shoot both film and digital, and with both good glass and cheap plastic lenses. I would like to think that my images all look as though they come from the same photographer, regardless of the tools used to create the images. I love having an arsenal of tools within reach so that I can always find a way to get what I see in my head into my final image. I suppose one of these days I'll settle into something and sell off a lot of the extraneous gear, but for now, there's a certain comfort in knowing these things are there for me if I need them.

Right now, I'm shooting Swarthmore, PA. I've always photographed the places I've lived in, and a few of them have ended up in my class assignments, but I've never loved a place as much as I love this one. I'm using my Holgas again and many of the images will end up as gum dichromate prints. I've been a little crazy about printing gum using digital CMYK negative separations lately, not only because of the type of imagery it affords me, but also because I like mixing the old or rudimentary techniques with the new. I think they feed and validate one another.......

That talk could go on, so for now, I've got some old images up. I've shot several rolls of Swarthmore and am about to get out and shoot more. The gum prints might be a little slow in getting up here as they will take a lot of time to make and need to be photographed, copy camera-style, to get digital captures. I'll be making mostly digital prints from my negs, then making gums of the ones I like the most out of CMYK separations.

Lum's Pond, DE

Stan's laboratory

Utterly random Holga shots....

St Helena's annual carnival, 2006