A post from the summer just now getting up:

My lovely friend Lolo had a post somewhere where she talked about disenchantion with Holga shots. I'm having a similar struggle. There's a fine line between control and not. I can't tell whether to feel worthless or not at taking a photo that 'accidentally' looks cool. The end product is the same, so what's it matter the intention or the process? But yet that does matter. I like a print more if I find it is printed B&W darkroom by hand.

I took a roll of half-frame Holga prints to get printed at this wonderful devoted-to-film camera shop in north Portland. When I came to pick it up they said they wanted to put one of my prints in their customer show (flattering, but also makes painfully obvious the normally-ignored fact that every shot I take is being looked over by other photographers, making me feel uncomfortably exposed). The print they chose was given to me. Disappointment. I quickly flipped through the other ones. Crap. Crap crap crap. Dammit. (Turns out the holga viewfinder is cropped a lot tighter than what the actual view will be). But really, it didn't seem like there was any artistic merit to these photos at all. Just the cheap gimmick of the frayed half-frame.

In the weeks since I took the photos I've started to like them more. I'm really glad I got prints of them instead of just got them to a disk, because there really is a lot more flexibility in holding the print in your hands and turning it this way and that to get different perspectives than to have an orientation 'chosen' for you on the computer screen (what is that special keystroke that lets you flip your screen again?) And while each image as a whole (especially those that are both half-frame and double-exposure) tends to be a bit busy and overwhelming, I do really enjoy looking closely at each image, picking through their density.

The photo the place chose is here, and the overall gallery (large but worth looking at because there are some really great shots) is here.

Things to think about:
A) Try to look closer at mistakes that make cool photos. You might learn something about a composition or exposure or style that you would've never experimented with otherwise.
B) Try to learn more about the Holga. Take more photos, become more acquainted with the beast.
C) I'm currently trying to take more control over these types of half-photos. No more double exposures unless I know exactly what it'll look like, and a record of what shot goes onto each frame (or each half-frame at least).

This post will mean more once I actually get some of these photos scanned, but (as evidenced by the subjects of the surrounding posts) I am pushing through a backlog of photos that stretches farther back than the summer. I'll get there eventually.

EDIT: The post with the photos I'm talking about is here.

I think I know what it is. The rut, I mean. Maybe I just need to kick back and let go of what I've been doing? Bust out the HOLGA; the B&W film; the tiny, old, manual-focus point and shoot that will have me guessing at my distance from the subject and hoping that in all turns out all right, even with a 2.8 aperture.

Get back to shooting people (what makes a good people-photo? A balance or an agreement or a crossroads of the photographer and the subject... Something I need to quit being chickenshit about). Anyway, some of the film I went through this summer I took to get developed at a place where I paid to have them scanned to a disk for me, which is the only reason I can present them to you now and not in another six months (though by this point they are already a few months old).



I really love my rockclimbing bruises. I never remember putting my knees into the wall that often when I'm up there, but then I get back and strip to uncover the remains of a battlefield on my legs.






Part of my scramble to take some photos of the house I lived in for 2 years, probably shot the week I moved out (or maybe the week before, if I was really on the ball).








More photos like this last one coming up later! I have been not-so-excellent at photos this summer, and popped open the back of my camera only to discover I was halfway through a roll of film probably three or four times in as many months.

I'm being forced into a break in putting up photos due to lack of access to a film/photo scanner, so that probably won't start up until October or so (the thought of which makes me cringe considering there are still photos from March that I haven't posted yet).

---

In my last blog I linked to the photo blog of an acquaintance of mine (I don't actually know him at all, really). His new one is here. I don't know what it is about these photos that keeps drawing me back... They are just the right amount of messy. If they were more neatly done the effect wouldn't be the same. It'd just be a photo of a road or a dashboard or a person sitting at a bar. Maybe I'm drawn to the way he totally owns the underexposure and the so-so focus and the non-traditional composition. Or maybe it's the (somewhat romantic) idea of giving up control of the photo. Using expired film and shooting from moving vehicles and catching blurs of colors and shapes and the hazy, indescribable feeling of the moment, instead of worrying about exposing for the sky or getting your friend to step a few feet to the left so the fat lady in the green sweater isn't in the shot.

Not that there is never a time for control. Just seems like there is something to be learned from almost everybody.

I don't really know where my photography is going these days. It's alright though, I guess. I think a lot of people are more lost than they care to admit.

Portland held a very strong allure for me when I first moved out west for school. I've always liked big cities, and Portland in particular possesses a certain quirkiness that gives it an intriguing personality. As I've made more trips over to Portland some of the novelty has worn off, but it is still a city I would like to explore more. I'll be living near(er) to the city this summer; hopefully I will take advantage of the opportunities this presents.


My friend Fishy has an uncanny ability to sense when a camera's pointed at her. Granted I am not the most inconspicuous, what with the big bulky SLR and the 97 seconds of focusing and light-metering before each shot, but Fishy will still catch me trying to photograph her from across the room at a crowded party and look up at the last second, pulling on The Face. It is a face-tugging-off-to-side sort of look, and I hate it, mostly because of how many of my photos it has ruined. When this happens I have two options (besides just giving in and photographing The Face): making an amusing/frustrated comment about The Face that will get a giggle out of Fishy (giving me a smiling photo instead of a Face photo), or sighing and dropping my camera, hoping that next time I will prove faster or Fishy will prove slower/less motivated, and I'll be able to avoid The Face. Looking back on this photo with my previous Fishy experience in mind, I realize that it's probably one of the only ones I have where she's not making the face I hate. I think here she was just tired and incredibly not in the mood to be photographed, and so just sort of stood there with the spacey look she has.




Portland likes to keep itself weird.

Back when it was still fairly winter-y around no one took any amount of sunlight for granted, so when March offered a couple of warm sunny days, people took advantage.


This kid (the one on the right) was already up in the tree when we got there. He has a book and a paper cup of tea in the tree with him. I still can't imagine being patient enough to bring tea into a tree.


This is a photo taken of my by someone unfamiliar with the workings of a manual-focus SLR, but I like it nonetheless.

---


The building in the distance is one of the most iconic and overly-photographed buildings on campus.


Someone was growing a bunch of cacti on this windowsill in the Microbiology/Wildlife building.

This is the materials research cleanroom at the university. I would like to be able to say more about the stuff in here, but I don't know very much about most of it.


This is The Tang. It's a sputtering system.

Many of the older buildings on campus happen to house the engineering/science labs. The building that this lab is in was completed in 1949 or 1950. Many parts of the labs bare obvious signs of having been in use in the 50s, 60s and 70s.




Everything is lit with these fluorescent bulbs that wreak havoc on the color balance of my negatives. I usually have a pretty hard time getting it back to something decent (and honestly I don't think it quite makes it most of the time...).



---


This is one of the places where I work on campus. On his first visit a friend of mine described it as a grown-up's kindergarten. "Look, you've even got little cubbies," he said.



---


I'm always at least somewhat amused to consider the impact that my mood has on the photography I post online. What is worthy of posting, where (what goes on my blog, what goes on my flickr, what is omitted from each), how much editing and poking is required before a photo is good enough... all are heavily mood-dependent. It can get kind of interesting going back to things I've uploaded before, under a different mood, and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

Another photo from the B&W roll I found recently.

A roommate of mine left on a study abroad to India in January. These were shot just before she left. Props on fulfilling your ambition to travel, Ror. Hope it's all going well for you.

I'm really unhappy with the color tint on the bottom photo. Turns out that I have been taking for granted the auto color-balance that processing places do when they make prints from the negatives. Now that I'm scanning in the shit myself, I'm not having such a fun time color balancing. But you'll all stick around to witness my trek up the long steep road of figuring-it-out, I hope?

I shot a roll of film in my senior year in high school (or shortly after graduating, I don't remember) with the intention of developing and printing it myself in the darkroom. However, it was a hectic-lazy type of summer, and somewhere in the midst of running around between houses and lazing around and doing nothing the roll of film disappeared.

Then the other day I pulled a cardboard box full of vitamins that my mother'd given me at some point down from the cabinet to make room for booze, and there was the lovely B&W roll amidst the vitamins. I'd been through two major moves (one across the country for school), as well as just some time generally bumming around different areas, and somehow this roll of film resurfaced after I'd long written it off as completely gone.

I don't think I've ever been happier with finding something long lost.

The first is my favorite shot from the roll. I don't even remember taking it.