a day at the beach

sea, sand, sun and salt in the air.



perfect.

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holga city pictures

These Holga shots were taken a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn’t yet gotten around to sharing them here.
Duesseldorf on a summer weekend, at twilight.

It was still hot, around 30°C and the city center and all the promenades along the Rhine were crowded.


All of these are developed and scanned at home, as always.
I’ve found out that the Holga makes for the most wonderful sun flares (because of its awful lens of course). I am loving this shot of my pony (bestest horse there ever was, loving you to bits baby!):

I’ve really got to try to get those sun flares in color shots as well!

holga color love

The first color shots out of my Holga are finally done and scanned and I am in love (again). Unfortunately medium format color film is pretty pricey but I will have to splurge on it once in a while I think.
These were all taken at the last rodeo at the barn:


Aching feet after a day’s riding:

Yummy candy for sale:

The oppressive heat we’ve been having has been hard on the horseys as well, with little shade and lots of flies on their pastures:

And, to save the best for last (something I always find very hard to do…anyone seen the movie ‘Remember Me’? I have my dessert first too):

holga street photography

Finally, another Holga post! What with starting a full time job I feel I have been neglecting my photography a little. I’ve had the same film in my Holga for several weeks, but I finally got it developed and scanned.
Since I work in the big city now I have been mainly taking city pictures.
These two were taken in my hometown a couple of weeks ago:


There is a lovely old town hall there with a market square attached, where many little café’s have opened up in the last years.
This next one was in front of a little old bakery shop, on my lunch break at work. I saw the little poodle and had to take this picture. Have I mentioned I love poodles? No, really! If they are not shorn to have this ridiculous haircut I think they are adorable and pretty little dogs 🙂

And then the thing happened that was bound to happen when you carry a Holga around loosely in your bag for days: Unnoticed by me it switched to ‘bulb’ exposure (which means the shutter stays open as long as you press it) and the last photos came out blurry and overexposed. Weirdly enough, I kinda like the result, though I’m going to tape the bulb switch from now on and will be retaking the photos soon (luckily, all of these places are right out the door from work as well):



My scanning technique needs some work as well…it’s killing my notebook because the photos are way too big. Any tipps on how to scan? I scan at 4800dpi and don’t let the program do anything in terms of color or exposure adjustment or dust prevention…I prefer to do all that myself in photoshop but it really is too much for my poor notebook.

at the barn

I honestly couldn’t think of a fitting title and I didn’t want to call this post ‘even more Holga photos’. But that’s what they are basically, more Holga photos and I am really loving them. The Holga is the camera I take to work (I couldn’t not take a camera, I feel naked without at least one camera in my bag), because it is so lightweight and inconspicious. I have a half hour lunch break during the day, but as I am actually eating lunch during work I can just wander around Cologne in that time. You’ll probably get lots of Holga city shots on here in the coming weeks 😉
Ok, enough rambling, here are the pics, developed at home again:

The barn is one of my favourite places in the world, I can’t even explain why. Some more western shots of my friend:


And a last one that wasn’t actually taken at the barn, but I really like it (it’s called ‘Rainy days call for pretty shoes’):

Today is a bank holiday in Germany, which is why I had time to write this post in the first place. Planned for today is: sewing, horseriding, taking photos and barbecuing, all in bright sunshine 🙂
Hoping you are all having a nice day too!

more holga photos

Everyone I show the Holga to looks at it curiously, picks it up (it weighs nothing) and then either laughs out loud or gives me the “Really? WTF?” look.
And they’re right, of course. But oh, aren’t they so wrong too! Because what could possibly be laughable or wrong about a camera that produces this:

and this:

and this:

?
The Holga is small and lightweight and quirky and it will be the one camera that will always fit in my bag, no matter where I go (I have been known to squeeze up to 3 cameras in a handbag, so that will definitely be an improvement). It makes me look and think and see differently than any other camera I have had. Laugh at that if you will. I’ll be too busy taking pictures and remembering to take the lens cap off and adjusting the vague focus points and advancing the film click by click per hand to notice 😉

By the way, I have now got a scanner for the negatives and I can highly recommend going that route of self-developing and self-scanning. It is more time consuming but definitely a lot less expensive and yields a much better result than letting a lab process and scan/print the images. Just saying this because I was hesitant of buying a scanner, but I am very happy now that I did!

dandelion

Who cares about cliché as long as it’s pretty 🙂
Canon 450D/50mm 1.4:

Holga 120N:

first holga photos

Here they come, my first Holga shots and also my first 2 self-processed rolls of film (both Ilford HP5plus)!
I think the Holga and I got off to a good start, though so far I’m having trouble finding the right focus point (apparently it’s not quite in the middle either but a bit to the right). Hence there’s only one photo that’s really and truly in focus and it’s the best shot from the two rolls:

I have to apologized for the bad quality scans. I got prints done and scanned them because I can’t scan negatives but I can see now it was a bad idea and a sad waste of money: the quality of the prints is appalling and this is not the first lab that I’ve had this problem with. I think I’ll have to dig into my savings to buy a scanner after all. Scanning negatives apparently is the only option if I’ll be shooting more film.

The up side is: I will definitely be shooting more film in the future. I am totally in love with my Holga and my Om-2N and have a lot of fun using them.

I went to another barn event today (a Quarter Mile Race on the local race track) and took along all three cameras and did indeed use them all! Each one is unique and I find myself looking for totally different motives, and seeing completely different things, depending on the camera I have in my hand. It’s fascinating and just an awful lot of fun!
Ok, two more horse shots (of course):

This one is pretty badly out of focus, but I still liked it too much not to show it:

processing film or: my new holga

A couple of weeks ago I just wouldn’t put it off any longer: I bought a Holga, a chinese toy camera. After a bit of research I decided on getting it directly from Hongkong via Ebay for the incredible price of ca. $20 USD (as usual german shops would have charged at least 3 times as much).
And oh, isn’t she pretty in her kitschy plastic cheapness?

I’d been wanting a Holga for some time but I was put off by having to research where to get it, how to use it, how to work with medium format film and especially how to process/develop film myself. But then I got my OM-2N and was getting back into film anyway. And the black and white photos I got back from the different labs I tried all had one thing in common: they were incredibly bad quality (think grainy, scratchy, blotchy), the labs took ages to make them and there would always be photos (and negatives!) mysteriously missing that were definitely correctly exposed. Top that with a staggering price and processing my b+w film at home has become a necessity.
So I thought, might as well do it thoroughly and go medium format and get a Holga (I am officially a freak).
I got a development tank and the chemicals and read and read and read about the process.
Today was the big day, it was time to process the first roll of film from my Holga! I won’t bore you with the process (I’ll just say I nearly cried when it took me 5 tries to get the film into the reel of the development tank in my semi-dark bathroom, under a dark bed sheet). I am still dumbfounded that after a lot of guesswork concerning development times and such, there is a strip of film drying in my bathroom…and it has pictures on it!!!

Actual, real pictures that are at least semi-correctly exposed! I’m hooked, processing film is my new favourite thing in the world!
See, this is the inverted image, they’ll be real photos!

And how convenient that I now know my Holga leaks light pretty much everywhere…off to buy some black tape tomorrow!
Eventually I would like to try out developing film in Coffee, because it’s more environmentally friendly and even cheaper than chemical developer and… well… it’s cool (can you say freak) 🙂
All in all the process was easier than I thought and I can’t wait to see the photos on paper and to process my next roll!