Holga Lost

Last Wednesday I woke up early, ready to go to work (with hopefully a short workday) and was puttering around on Twitter when I saw a tweet that was not being processed in my brain: Holga was no more. 

What??! This made no sense. I mean, people KNOW what the Holga is and have actually bought one in the last couple of years... some people even use it, even if they don't touch any other film cameras anymore. It's such a THING, whether you want to make fun of Hipsters or artists or people that don't just use the stupid instagram filter, many people have at least heard of the Holga. I frantically scoured the internet for any information and even took a trip that evening to Freestyle Photo in Hollywood, the source of the information where it was further confirmed both by conversations with employees and the signs posted all around the Holga displays, right near the doors, as always.

There's all sorts of things and ideas to jump to, but from what I understand, the situation is a little more confusing and frustrating than just "no one shoots film anymore." When it was announced the factory was shutting down, people immediately wanted to purchase the equipment to continue making the cameras, but it was already destroyed. Holga was created in the early 1980's in China and has been made there the entire time it has existed.

one of the first photos I shot with a Holga

Although I started shooting film in the late 1990's while in high school, I didn't pick up my first Holga until relatively recently in 2013 (some people say the Holga was their first camera in photography.... at my school we went even cheaper and made pinhole cameras out of whatever we wanted.) I first got into Medium Format film using a Yashica Mat, which was nice, but heavy. That's when I discovered toy cameras and how cheap and lightweight they were. My first was a Diana+ & I loved my medium format Diana, but I loved how much more durable the Holga felt (I once purchased the 35mm Diana and returned it before ever getting a full roll through it because it was malfunctioning and shredded film!) Just about a year ago I picked up my first 35mm Holga and I think I've shot somewhere close to 50 rolls of film with 35mm Holgas this year.

from my first 35mm roll in a Holga

One of the things I grew to love about the Holga was the idea that it was "disposable". This sounds terrible considering how much I love it, but it was more about the freedom than about literally tossing the camera in the trash when I was done with it. By knowing I could pick up this stupid camera that took crazy photos effortlessly and replace it for $40 or less, I didn't have to worry. I've now taken a few to Burning Man, a notoriously dusty, harsh place, because hey, there were tons of awesome things to photograph there and if a Holga got destroyed, no big deal! I never had to worry about keeping the batteries charged and the camera was so lightweight without electronics or batteries, it was easy to shove into my bags and forget it was there until I wanted it. There was no fiddling with on/off switches when it came time to shoot - just pull off the lens cap and go! And as a bonus, when I scanned the resulting photos, I had better photo quality and more authentic beautiful grain than in digital photos. I also had all sorts of special effects without putting any extra effort into it and every roll became it's own little surprise.

Despite all these conditions and weirdness, I really loved the photos that came from it. In some ways, it was my perfect camera. I had actually just started experimenting with trying to make some money back on the massive amounts I've spent on cameras, film & developing over the years by having some Christmas Cards printed up feature a Holga photo I shot last year and reopening my etsy shop. 


This is all on top of the freedom of embracing the camera as a constant experiment. How many times can I get away with exposing this? Who knows?! Will I get any light leaks or terrible reflections in the lens?! Who knows!  Did I really advance to the next frame? Does it matter?

That's why I find it to be ironic that one of the most terrible things about the Holga is when the country that originally made the camera finally decided to embrace my Holga philosophy and concluded that yes, the Holga was also disposable.

Sigh.

Seeing how this is processed by others is important and interesting to me so I've been constantly looking for stuff online. I know that this has definitely hit me like in death in ways complete with feelings of denial, angry and sadness. I don't look forward to the day when I don't really have the option of shooting film anymore because there's things about it that I'm not sure digital will ever completely "get". And I say this as someone that does shoot digital as well as works by day in technology. They both have their places, but I came back to film after not shooting it for a few years because digital as it turns out, wasn't always better. Shooting with film forces you to become a better photographer in ways that digital doesn't necessarily. When you have 12 exposures to a roll of film, shooting 100 photos is much less reasonable, especially since you don't have that instant feedback loop. Holgas further press you to embrace imperfection if you ever want the job done. Effects and composition are different things. Some of us can certainly learn to better embrace imperfection in a realm we normally add our own expectations of perfection.

If I step back and think, I had a feeling something was up with Holga. When I went to Burning Man this year, I thought about picking up an extra Holga 135, but finding them online already seemed a little more difficult. Some of the listings for Holgas on Amazon were labelled "Discontinued by Manufacturer". When I finally went to Freestyle Photo to get one, I asked the employee helping me if Holgas were going away due to my suspicions between the listings on Amazon and Freestyle themselves putting tons of Holga stuff on clearance, but they said no. I breathed a sigh of relief, purchased my new 135 Holga to replace the one that got messed up in the incredible dust storm at Burning Man this year and went on my way.

HolgaJen is hosting a post later this month with people's favorite Holga photos of 2015. I need to dig through mine and maybe scan some more in the next couple of weeks! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone elses as well, even if I wish it was happening under different conditions....

I'm trying to let this be more of a new stage in the life of Holga instead of it disappearing forever, but it's still hard. It's only been a week......




Past (and future) Holga posts by me can be found here.

Sky landscape actions

More photos from my first roll of film from the Lomography Actioncamera, this time mostly landscapes. Although this camera isn't the best for landscapes for a variety of reasons, sometimes you just have to go with what you have and this camera's been in my bag most consistently the last few weeks. What's interesting is how similar some of the landscapes look over the space of a second, while others I have to wonder if the variation is mostly due to slight difference in lens placement for each 1/4 of the photo or just slight changes over time. Part of why I love giant open spaces at times is that although there's so much going on and things constantly changing, when you get back far enough and adjust your perspective, it's so much calmer for the most part (outside of major events) and often the most obvious changes are how the light constantly shifts. I need a lack of overwhelming details sometimes.

I don't always give the view of the mountains from my company's office the credit it deserves....

DogFluff Action

I don't really recall seeing dogs tied up in front of stores where I grew up in Texas. On the other hand, here in Los Angeles people are well known for integrating their dogs into their daily city lives and leaving your dog tied up outside is definitely a "thing" (I know it is other places re: the Portlandia sketch)... Some of these unsupervised dogs are aggressive towards any random people while others are happy to meet any new people and say hi. Some seem distressed to be away from their owners while others seem glad to have a chance to rest and chill alone. Over the years of shooting photos while walking around Los Angeles, I've enjoyed trying to capture these guys in photos in whatever states.

Just this evening while running an errand, I got to visit with a little brown Chihuahua type guy who was super friendly and came running over to me as soon as I said hi, eager for ear scratches and general love. I'm currently in one of the longest periods of my life that I've gone without a pet (3 months already!) and I suppose I treasure these little moments of connecting with random animal friends more than normal.

A couple weeks ago while coming home from the farmers market, I spotted this little fluffy guy tied up to a parking meter....I'm looking forward to shooting these dogs and other city animals with the actionsampler as I think this camera can give a little more life to these guys!

Actionsampler samples!

A few weeks ago I picked up a Lomography ActionSampler camera. This cheap camera has 4 separate lenses (Lomography also makes other models with multiple lenses) that expose 1/4 of a negative with a slight delay between each firing. The result is a tiny 4 scene movie or in the case of more stationary scenes, 4 slightly different perspectives (this lecture by David Hockey on perspective is interesting in light of this camera!), on a single negative.  These are the first few photos from the first roll. Just like most camera, it does seem to have a learning curve in terms of light/film needed as well as what sorts of situations "work" with the camera. I think this is the first camera I've  used that doesn't really have a viewfinder at all... instead it just has a tiny plastic frame that flips up to let you better guess what's going to happen.... the joys of lomography!

driving on the 101 towards Hollywood

seasons actually do exist in Los Angeles!

while driving in Silver Lake we saw this guy jamming down the street in a bike-like area in his wheelchair! WHaaaaaAAA! The real crazy part though was watching him just go straight through a red light (I guess his wheelchair didn't have brakes to handle his speed?) and all of the cars with the green light having to stop. At least he's rare enough to catch attention, but I was a bit scared for him considering he didn't have lights or a super reflective wheelchair.

Magazine Graffiti Women

Last year when I first participated in the 29 Faces challenge, I experimented with a different technique for each face and stumbled on the idea of painting on magazine pages. I hadn't played with this idea at all until this past week when I hit a roadblock, unable to get into any art in particular when I decided it was time to do something more "mindless" and decided to paint on some magazine pages.

I lovvvvvvve the eye and nose on this one

 and a couple of short time-lapse process videos of the purple and pink faces. Each one compresses about 45 min to ~1 min:

Although, as before, I kinda view this as cheating, I still think it's a good and interesting technique to use, especially to just experiment with getting the "feel" of painting a properly proportioned face in different positions. Plus, once you slap down the first layer of paint, you're kinda on your own in terms of going forward with shading and fixing your slopped paint slapping. I like the result and I'll probably go to this and maybe even try it out with my own photos at some point....

Oral Expulsion

One of the things that I love about collage is that anything is fair game. Pictures? Random sheets of paper? Candy wrappers? Tickets, scraps, little handouts, bits of left over art projects? They can all be fodder for new ideas, juxtaposed or cut down and manipulated into deformed versions of their former selves. I learned this years ago when I first started making collages and I would just make piles of cut outs and other random things and purposely toss them onto my table. I'd shuffle them around and some days some combinations would appear and I would run with it.... Now that I have too many hobbies to count, I still do this, although things have changed a little. I have a large journal that I've using to clean off painty things... a dirty brayer, a paint smeared stencil & whatever other junk I decided to press onto the Gelli plate. And these painted pages sometimes sit for a while before things click to make the whole. This past weekend I opened one of these pages and got to town. This was the result.

It's funny though because once I looked at it for a while, I realized this was likely at least partially inspired by sources of collage material that I sometimes ignore... because not all collage materials come in the physical sense.. instead some comes from a more mental place and I realized that unconsciously, I was inspired by a recent blog post from a friend about one of her experiences with San Pedro while in Peru and specifically her experiencing her ego as a little rodent......

Halloween 2015

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but I really love Halloween. Many parts of it speak to my inner goth. I love the decorations. I love that some of the animals I really find to be awesome and interesting, including bats and rats, are socially acceptable at Halloween. I love that I can find awesome art supplies and things with these animals I enjoy. I like seeing people's creativity when it comes to decorating their homes and making costumes. And in the end, the funny part is that because I enjoy all the build up to Halloween, I actually don't even care if I do anything on Halloween itself! I'm still not sure if I'm doing anything tonight, but I have a bird costume I made from materials I had on hand for my work Halloween party earlier this week. We shall see!!

These photos were all shot in the time leading up to Halloween this year from Disneyland, stores, people's yard in the neighborhoods surrounding me in Toluca Lake, Burbank & North Hollywood. We also went to a large setup in someone's front yard called "Boney Island" in Sherman Oaks. So much Halloween! Hope you have a fantastic day!

at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland

 

I felt a little weird about this. There was a sign above the garage spray painted that said "my wife cheated on me" and another a few feet away that says "don't call 911". Then on the lawn of this likely multi-million dollar house is a variety of "trash" and "redneck" things....

all that will be seen of my work Halloween party...

Boney Island