Holga?

Yes, this image was shot with a Holga. Last Saturday I wanted to play so I loaded up one Holga....12 shots on a roll of 120 film and headed out the door. I had found out that there is one of the labs here in SMA who can process 120 negative film locally. Between the lab and my house I shot the roll of film so I could give them a try. This one is from a children's park that I passed on my way to the lab.

I haven't been shooting with the Holga for quite a while now because I don't have a darkroom here and somehow I just haven't been able to make myself do the developing in a daylight tank. But this roll of film was color and I changed it in Photoshop CS3 to black and white. The new CS3 has a very nice process for changing color images to black and white....very similar to a plug-in I was using in CS2.

Another reason that I haven't been too excited about scanning film is that there is so much dust here that it takes forever to clean up a negative after it is scanned. BUT I now have a new scanner, the Epson Perfection V700, and it has Digital Ice that takes care of most of the dust and scratches. I just started up the scanner yesterday and I have some issues to work out with it but I was able to scan the film that I picked up yesterday.

Shooting with a Holga is freeing. First of all it is light and secondly, you have so little control that you just let go and go with the flow. That is not to say that all of your knowledge about photography doesn't kick in but there will be light leaks, exposures that are not correct....just things that you can't control so you turn it over to your muse, your angel......... It is all very freeing to let go of expectations. Then every time you get a roll back if there is a keeper or two it is exciting and you feel like you have been given a gift.