March 20, 2011

The HolgaWide


When the Holga first showed up in the art and photo world, I was as enamored as anyone with its low-tech brilliance and high art results.  Never being able to leave good enough alone I quickly did a variety of the mods that are commonly discussed on enthusiast sites and blogs as well as adding a couple of my own.  My favorite homebrew was gluing an orange gel on the 'aperture' arm so I could dial in darker sky's on a clear blue day when shooting black and white film.  My Holga film of choice is Ilford XP2+ for its ability to shoot completely and utterly without thinking whatsoever, ease of processing and fantastic scanability.   For some reason, when I load color in the camera, I still find myself thinking too much about light instead of just shooting without thought.  XP2+ completely cures me of that.

The next phase of my Holga exploration comes in pieces, many of them.  I started slicing and dicing the cameras up and to date have build a Holgablad, two Holgawides and most recently a Holgaroid, which shoots instant pack film. 
The first creation I want to share was featured in the 2003 Book, Adventures With Pinhole and Homemade Cameras: From Tin Cans to Precision Engineering.  If you are old enough to remember the 3D cameras of yesteryear there were two different manufactures, one was a Nishika, which was widely pimped by Vincent Price, full systems can still be found on eBay complete with VHS tape where the man of horror himself walks you through how to use your strange new camera.  As cool as this is for horror film and Michael Jackson enthusiasts alike, you don't want to use this variation of 3D technology. 














March 12, 2011

Southern Comfort-

I'm writing from the air as I'm flying home from the Society of Photographic Educators or SPE convention in Atlanta.  I have to say it was fantastic and I didn't even stay for the entire weekend.  I had a full docket of people that I wanted to talk to in person and I'm confident I missed well more then half of them. 


But it doesn't matter...not a bit.  The people I did talk to and share work with did, just as friend and prominent photo educator, Jeff Curto, said they would...left me totally energized and wanting to shoot more.

So heading to the airport, when the driver, who looked freakishly like Quinn on Dexter and ironically who too was packing a heater (when asked about it, all he said was 'you are in the south sir'...I'm honestly not sure what that means...) but when he got me to the airport in crazy record time at the hight the Friday rush, I suddenly had the opportunity to spend some time shooting one of my very favorite subjects. It was refreshing to not get stopped by police or airport security to boot, something that generally doesn't happen in Chicago.  This gave me a luxurious amount of time to shoot in the late afternoon sun.

I hope you like the images!

So thank you Atlanta, thank you SPE, and thank you SCAD Atlanta for your hospitality and your inspiration.  Thanks for 20 foot camera extensions (totally cool, you gotta check this out), talks about guerrilla student exhibitions hung in the alleys of the gallery district (I hope you are reading Focus Group!), inspirational traveling tents of historical modern imagery and feedback that after all, I'm really not a Dummy but the creator of a useful tool.  

So as I've said till I'm blue in the face, grab a camera and go shoot something...anything, just get get out there and make some images!

March 10, 2011

Wasted space...

The remarkably wide sign at the local CVS.