holga photos

17-Year-Old Thinks She's Getting Into Photography

June 8, 2009 | The Onion Issue 45•24

EUGENE, OR—After wasting an afternoon taking pictures of a broken tricycle, moss on trees, and the shadow of a wrought-iron fence, Churchill Alternative High School senior Jessica Ivers falsely informed family and friends Saturday that she was getting into photography. "I love the way real film looks," said Ivers, who has owned the old single-lens reflex 35 millimeter camera for exactly one week, and named as her favorite photographers "probably Diane Arbus" and the French guy who took the picture of the boy with the wine bottle. "I'm really fascinated by textures, and I think I'll be able to get some good shots of my grandma's hands this weekend." Sources close to Ivers expect the camera to join her clarinet and yoga mat under her bed once she pays $14.85 to develop the roll of clumsy, overexposed images.


so i'm not getting into photography, but i do find it interesting. dont worry, i didnt go out and buy an expensive camera with a big lens and im not about therefore call myself a photographer and start asking you to refer your friends so that i can do their weddings even though i have no experience or training beyond reading the instruction manual for my expensive camera. not remotely.

but nellie and i do own a holga camera. two actually. my friend bought me one a couple years ago and they are pretty cool. nellie brought one to europe and i'm glad she did. so i like the holga because you never know what you are going to get. its not digital and requires film so you cant immediately see how the picture turned out. you also have to advance the film manually and you have to try and line up each picture correctly(?). not sure how to explain that. there is no automatic advancement that puts the slide in the right position. so sometimes your pictures overlap if you dont line it up exactly, which almost always happens because there is no way to know if its lined up correctly. also, if you forget to wind it, then it will just take pictures on top of each other. it also has an old school button which literally just opens up the shutter. so depending on how long you hold down the button will determine how much light comes in to each picture. i dont know if its for that reason or another, but the colors usually get blown out.

so as you can tell, the pictures are pretty unpredictable as to how they will come out. again, im not getting into photography. im not about to start selling these photos (unless of course you wanted to buy them), but i did think some were worth posting.



so this and the last one might be my favorite. i think its mainly because of the colors. nothing is really going on in the photo. the coastline is of course great, but the holga doesnt really give you much detail and its not as good as any digital camera. but the colors are fascinating. i feel like it has a colors and a feel that people would try and mimic with a photo editing program. its dull and feels like the photo could have been taken in the 1970s. except that if it was taken in the 70s, there is no way the blue in the ocean would be as bright and vibrant. its almost as though it captures the colors in their purest and best form. not entirely, but the sand is very brown and dull. it wasnt that dull of course, it was lighter sand, just like the ocean wasnt that blue, although it was lighter than the pacific ocean and was pretty blue. somehow the one is dulled down and the other blown out and they create a great contrast. believe me, not all turn out like this, most are just a mess, but sometimes you get something interesting, like this one.



this one is great only because the grass turned out yellow. why? i dont know. it wasnt yellow. it was some of the greenest and nicest grass ive ever been on. yet for some reason it comes out yellow. maybe because the film wasnt wound properly and so there was more light exposed on the picture when the next picture was taken. not sure. someone with a tiny bit of photography knowledge probably knows. this one also shows what happens when you dont wind the film properly and two photos overlap.



this one is actually four pictures combined. nellie forgot to wind the film after each photo so she ended up taking four pictures on top of each other. completely done by accident, but it made the field look fuller and it just looks really cool.



so i really like these two because it shows you the impact of the sun. pretty much the same photo, one just towards the sun and the other not. but the contrast and impact of the sun is awesome. but the one towards the sun doesnt get blown out and the whole image doesnt go bright yellow where you cant see anything. instead the colors just come out and explode. whereas the other one is dull but strong colors. again, it has a sort of faded, ancient feel to it or almost feels like its out of a scene from a horror film where they blur the screen and fade the colors.





nellie really likes this one. its just a random photo. this is our attempt at being 'artsy' with our photography, yet unoriginal. like taking photos of the texture of your grandma's hands, or a picture of your friends in front of that totally cool building downtown that is like old looking with the paint chipping off.



so nellie took this one. its just a random street in madrid. i like how the street and buildings are brown and look faded, yet there are random colors throughout, like the green tree, a strip of blue sky, and the random red shirt. again, its a fun camera because its so unpredictable. im sure many photographers know how to 'use' them so that their photos turn our how they want or how they expect. we dont really know what we are doing. which is actually better for us since it keeps our expectations low and makes it that much better when we get an interesting photo because we have no idea why it turned out but others didnt. sometimes its nice having things be unpredictable.

here a couple others: the temple and then a picture on omaha beach looking up at the hills and cliffs that the allied forces had to climb.