My First Holga Photos

I have a new camera. My father left me a little money and I thought it was time to challenge myself . . . . something with interchangeable lenses. Interchangeable lenses means I can do more digital pinhole photography. After my initial experiments I knew this was exactly where I wanted to go. 

After a lot of research I bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC G3, one of a new breed of cameras that has a light compact body but SLR capabilites . . . . delivered by the Four Third system. And best of all Holga does a lens that fits it . . .. lovely cheap shit bit of plastic that makes your high quality camera perform like a toy! Love the irony! The camera itself has so many bells and whistles on it that I lost patience with it and stuck the Holga lens on it just to try and get some pictures out of it.  Hmm, so crummy and dark . . .  the shot above as you can see came out all blue but hey, look what happens when you invert it in Photoshop . . . . .  awesome effect I'm sure you'll agree.

Here's another one taken indoors with some of the characteristic Holga vignetting round the edges.  . . . .

This one I used 'posterize' and then desaturated . . .  lots of fun and lots of possibilities.  The pros and cons of the camera I will post on at a further date. Like when I've finally managed to get through all the millions of ( totally unnecessary ) menus and worked out how to use the damm thing! One thing that is interesting is the aspect ratio . . .  these pictures are roughly 5x4" not the usual 6x4" and there are other settings which I have yet to try but I know one of them will give me a square picture!!! O.K, all I have to do is read the whole of the 208 page PDF of instructions. I may be some time . . . .

Portrait Photography

Beautiful sunny morning  . . . . cameras all over the table . . . . my husband was showing me how interchangeable lenses work. Such lovely chunky old cameras, two Prakticas and a Canon . . . . analogue cameras, not a digital button in sight. I'm just sorry that film and developing is so expensive because there is something so straightforward about these cameras

Grabbing my digital I fired off a couple of shots. I have a new camera and thought I'd grab a couple of pictures to go with a blog post about it.But these pictures of my husband turned out better than I thought. See the previous post for the other picture . . .  I may never take a better photo than this.

I'm still trying to work out the millions of menus and options that come with my new camera plus the card I got for it won't behave so sucks-boo to that. I do have a Holga lens for it so when I do get it to work it's going to be amazing.

Simply the best photo I've ever taken

Straight out of the camera . . . . . . spur of the moment and simply the best photo I've ever taken.

Self Portrait Photography

 Fooling round with the camera trying to get a picture of my new haircut . .  . got two mirrors so I thought I'd try it that way first . . . .  mostly what you get is your camera and not much else . .  . .

a bit of positioning . . . I'm pretty short so I've got to make sure I get myself in the picture . . .  changed the camera setting because the sun went in . . .  a cold blueish white balance and gave the exposure a bit of a pop . . . . . defintely like this. Nothing done to these now except cropping

and then I began to be intruiged by the idea of this . . .  " in the moment" as my brother Achim Friederich ( v talented photographer ) says. Can I capture a moment of truth about myself here? I can do this when photographing other people but is it possible to be open and honest enough to do this with yourself? Or will the very fact that I am trying to do this spoil it? Can you catch your shadow or a glimpse of your soul?

Maybe I didn't quite but i had a lot of fun trying . . .  the one below is my favourite . . .  there's mischief in that beady eye!

  

Then try the other mirror . . . .  yes, I do know how to work the camera but I'm trying to see what I'll get while at the same time taking the picture. I love the restrictions of things like this, working within that to see what you can achieve. God, I look just like my Dad in this one . . . . I  simply desaturated this one, nothing more.

A bit more tweaking with levels to bring out some contrast but actually prefer the one above . . . hmm, need to think . . .  how to get better pictures, or rather more interesting pictures, how to get that honesty?