holgaversary

may 16th, 2009 marked my one-year holgaversary. i ordered my first holga (my first "as-adult" film camera) on may 16th, 2008.

i missed my one year flickr anniversary (april 26th, i think) and the one year anniversary marking my mom buying me, as an early b-day present, the canon powershot s5 (maybe early feb, 2008?), so i was glad to actually remember and mark the holgaversary by going out and taking a few shots with the holga.

i'm frankly amazed that the canon powershot led to the events and the enjoyment i've experienced over the past year. and i recall so vividly, when my mom offered to buy me the powershot, i felt it would be a fairly ridiculous expense. I aleady had a decent digital camera--not one that i ever really liked using--but it served well for research purposes. and the only photos i took at that point were images of student work. but my mom had bought herself another canon digital camera and i was testing it out to teach her how to use it. it was such a hoot to work with, i couldn't stop using it and trying new things. she kept saying, "okay--do you want that one and i'll get myself another?" i really didn't. her camera was fun to use but i already had one and it served me well for my research and scholarship. she offered to buy me my own camera a few more times that weekend. like i said, it was hard to stop taking pics with it once i started. i knew i wanted something with more manual controls, so we ended up going out and looking around and i settled on the powershot s5.

once i started taking pics with the powershot--and i was quickly-addicted, sometimes taking 300 shots a day just to experiment, to play around--i put off joining flickr, thinking it would be way too daunting and overwhelming. shortly after i joined, i realized flickr's teaching potential. i'm not sure how or where i came across the first holga photograph i had seen, but i was transfixed. i started researching holgas, looking at other photographs and then i got one of my own. it was a couple months before i started developing my own b/w film, another month till i started developing color at home, so there was a lot of time spent waiting for film to come back from the place i sent it for developing. speaking of diy color developing, i guess i'd say hands-down that this is the thing i was most scared to do and the thing that i'm most glad i tried given how much money it's saved me over the past 8 months or so. again, if not for the advice and generosity of folks on flickr, well, i definitely probably wouldn't have known you could do diy color developing. as for other of the years' high points, low points, regrets, finds, misses, challenges, etc.:

so about diana+. wow. what a rough time this has been. when things work between us, they are amazing. the panda photo from the san diego conference trip is still one of my all-time favs. problem is, most of the time we don't work or play well together. ah, diana.


as for favorite films: hands down, for b/w it has got to be adox chs art (120 or 35mm) and efke kb 400 (35mm). the holga train station image above was taken with adox chs art 100.

what i'm not digging: surprisingly, higher speed films. ilford delta 3200, even the fuji 800 speed films. i thought i'd really like working with the higher speed films--color especially--but i've just not been feeling it.

some 60-70 cameras (yikes) later, i have to say that the camera i am most glad that i bought (and i say this only because i was going to pass on it) was the ultronic panoramic. i actually picked up two at resale shops when i went home for easter. that the camera was only a buck is pretty amazing. i was incredibly amazed though when i saw the images it was capable of taking. wow. i'm really, really glad i didn't pass on this one thinking that because it looked like junk the images would be junk--and not the interesting kind of junky i really love.

what i imagined i'd be doing more of at this point in time: most definitely, pinhole photography. i picked up a 35mm zeroimage and i really, really liked working with it. my plans were to spend this spring and summer getting into 4x5 pinhole photography. i figured that i'd go with another zeroimage as soon as i saved money for that and for the 4x5 tank, film, etc. that i agreed to start volunteering my time taking pics of rescued animals, animals needing homes and of so many, many pitbulls, kind of put the brakes on the pinhole plans.

what i've most enjoyed doing: most definitely, buying cameras and seeing if i'll be able to flip the lenses on them without breaking the cameras or shutters or lenses and without hurting myself. thanks again to folks on flickr and the incredible resources to be found there, my first flip was with the brownie hawkeye flash. --along with the ultronic, holga, and zenit em, this has definitely been one of my favorite cameras with which to take photographs of llamas in the springtime.

tripping final

This video, comprised of six short sequences or movements, combines voice-over, text from CCC and film clips from the Prelinger Archive’s ephemeral film collection (www.archive.org/details/prelinger) and interprets or enacts select events, issues and questions related to writing from CCCC’s sixty-year history. Of particular interest is the role that writing (as opposed to the uptake of other semiotic resources) has played in that history--and might play in its future.

tripping the decades: a CCCC remix

missing this day

given the extreme cold and the dearth of new, cool, and colorful
things to photograph, i was thinking i was experiencing spring fever. that i keep thinking about this day suggests what i'm really experiencing is a late summer kind of fever.

but i loved this particular day and am missing it now: august 16th, 2008. the semester was just weeks away from beginning and having had the spring term off, i was eager to get back to business as usual but sad to see the summer (and all the time i had for photo play) end. i learned about the car show on campus earlier that morning. never having attended one, i came home, checked it out online--mainly to see if there was an entrance fee (i think at the time, i had nine dollars and change on my person), and then headed up to campus around noon.

the weather was amazing and the sky was crazy blue and white. just perfect. and the music was loud and good. for my first trip up to campus, i brought with me the smena (loaded with color film), and the bhf, holga and agfa ansco plenax, each of which was loaded with b/w film. at the time, i had just begun developing my own b/w at home and was beginning to experiment with coffee developing. it would be some time (a month and a day, in fact) before i started doing my own color developing at home, so the images i took with the smena (see first two images below) would sit on the shelf for a while.

for my second trip up, i brought with me my canon powershot s5 (see image above). it occured to me that what i'd coffee develop later that day wouldn't do justice to the mad colors of the cars and sky and who knew when or if i'd get the roll from the smena developed. (at this time, with the semester about to start, it hadn't really occured to me to get into color diy developing right away.)

i recall feeling kind of silly walking around shooting images with the folder (see images below with the sprocket holes). i wasn't used to taking photos with people around (. . .i'm still not). i recall passing--a number of times, actually--a guy taking pictures with a really hooked up digital camera. and here i am with the folder and my bhf feeling pretty foolish. at one point, another guy stops me to ask if the folder is really old or if it was a new (i.e., perhaps digital?) camera made to look old. good question.

my favorite shot of the day (perhaps ironically) didn't contain evidence that it was taken at the car show. in fact, it might have been taken (almost) anywhere. i was sitting on the side of the hill, preparing to go home to get the canon when i saw this hatted woman standing there with her back to me. i knew i had another shot or two left in the folder and figured that if she didn't see me, well, it would be okay to take the shot. right before i was about to take it, she turned around and saw me seeing her. as soon as i took the shot, i recall thinking, "please, please let this turn out--don't let the film break, don't let me find that the camera has crazy light leaks--don't let me mess up the processing or fixing. i really need to see this one--i really need it to turn out." the first (and only other) time i've felt that way about an image was when i took this one. the way the vendor was positioned, the way the light was falling on her--just amazing, to the eye anyway. in that case, i hadn't begun developing at home and the wait to see if or how the image came out was really long and difficult. added to that, my luck with shooting 35mm in the holga hadn't been that great.

woody

shopping list

a small good thing

well, maybe the oatmeal container isn't that small or necessarily good, but i'm hoping the pinhole will be. and certainly the shutter is sweet!

i decided my new year's resolution will be to experiment with paper negatives. using this most excellent resource (see esp. the shutter page) i built the camera last week and am now deciding what paper and developer i'd like to try.

in the meantime. . .

having been able to achieve with the pinhawk something of the sharpness i was hoping to achieve when i started experimenting with pinhole cameras, i decided to try the zero image again to see if using a more stable tripod, shooting indoors and ensuring the camera didn't move at all would help combat some of the softness i found with the zero image test roll. all i can say is thank goodness there weren't any non-reproducible images on the second roll. (well, technically there were a few that would be hard to restage--images i had hoped to include in an upcoming process presentation but it wasn't necessarily an integral part of the presentation. . .). only two of the images (see the first two shots below) came out. most of the negative strip was clear. i could see a shadows of images here and there and on a few of the frames i could make out something at the sides/top and bottom of each frame but for the most part, the negatives were a mess. unusable. as a matter of fact, i've never (not even when working with diana or holga) have i had this many unusable frames per roll.

so if the bear and photo shots below had looked like the others, i might have reasoned that the developer time was wrong or that something went wrong inside the camera. i have no idea at this point how to make sense of what exactly happened, why or how to ensure it doesn't happen again. it could simply be a matter of miscalculating the exposure time but i used the same process as i did with the first roll.

but here's another mystery about the zero one. after i saw the negatives, i decided to see if something was blocking the pinhole. (again, that the last two images were the only two to look halfway "normal" makes me think that whatever happened had worked itself out by the end of the roll.) compared with the pinholes i've made, this one seems. . .i don't know, fuzzy? with the ones i've made if i hold them up to the light, the light comes sharply though the pinhole. not in this case. i'm not sure if that's a feature of zero one pinholes or if mine is shall we say, "unique."

though i hadn't planned to use the zero image over the holidays, i really needed to see what would happen if i shot another roll of film in the camera. if the problem was the pinhole, it made sense that my exposure times would be wildly off.

luckily, i had an expired roll of efke kb 400--this would allow for shorter exposure times and the fact that there were 24 exposures on the roll meant that i could shoot and develop a roll rather quickly. i calculated the exposure times as i had with the other two rolls and these were all fine--all there (see images beneath first two below). a bit over-exposed but i knew i had gone a bit long on some of the shots, hoping for more light-play/contrast then a normal exposure would afford. so yeah. not sure what happened with the other roll. and i'm still not certain if there's something up with the pinhole.

i kept the camera steady for most of the shots but they are not nearly as sharp as the last pinhawk images. i understand that part of this has to do with the distance between the pinhole and film. and it's not that i'm not liking the zero image images, it's more a matter of being frustrated again by the lack of sharpness.