In a New Way

See in a New Way. That is the motto of a little company known as Lensbaby. And I love it, not only that I love my Lensbaby Composer. You’ve undoubtedly seen the occasional Lensbaby image pop up here from time to time. Now you will see it every day, at least until the end of January. Cause, you know, it’s time for the annual photo day project.

I’ve always tried to focus on a theme, whether conceptual or technical, and this year though it’s primarily technical because I will be shooting only with my Lensbaby, it will also be thematic. I will literally look at things in a new way as the motto states, and this brings us back around to the original fear when I started the photo a month project way back when. You may end up having to look at things in my kitchen, as well as everything that is constantly around me or places that I always go. But I guarantee, you will look at it in a new way.

And would you look at that, this one even fits nicely into Cast Shadows. Go figure that projects I care about happen to overlap. Whodathunkit?

Epic Holga

It's taken us a while to get here, but we made it, Holga Days is upon us.

In case you forgot, I took one photo each day in January with my Holga. Regardless of how it came out (perfect and fabulous or more along the lines of "what in the...," it's going here. I'm not even going to "crop and rotate" so the images are straight or do any fancy post production, just basics, like in photojournalism. Yep, that means there will be a lot of potential for failure, but really, how often do we learn from success? To aid in the learning, I'll included some technical specifications, like focal length, aperture, etc, because I think it's amusing. I'll leave out the rest of my thoughts on that considering the inspiration of this series.

In any case, thanks for the patience. I know the "Big Secret" project took up a lot of time and unless you are particularly drawn to abstract color representation, it was certainly an unusual flavor, especially the "cakes." So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Now, for those of you new to my blog, it is possible that A) You have no idea the kind of crazy I am capable of and B) You are a little unsure on what exactly a Holga is.

So to clear things up, how about some book learnin' without the books. Already it sounds like a win-win for you techheads, though it is actually a little depressing when you think of a world without books, but I digress.

The Holga is a toy camera, made almost entirely out of plastic, including the lens, and most often is the result of a low quality of manufacturing. It's that low end production value that leads to all kinds of crazy: light leaks, natural vignetting, blur all of which are explicitly unique to each camera. So my camera is uniquely mine, and not just because of the rubber bands (it helps hold the back on and keeps the film from falling out).

Additionally, it has an extremely limited control including a whopping two apertures (Sunny and Cloudy/Flash though due to some manufacturing it's pretty much one aperture), descriptors for your focus from one, group of three, large group, to mountain, and it technically has two shutter speeds: Normal which I'm still not entirely sure what the actual speed is (again this can vary between cameras as well), and Bulb or open until you release the shutter. It also possesses a view port next to the lens, which means what you see may not be what you get. So as you can tell, it's not the most ideal camera to use when you really "have to" get the shot, but it's a fun little camera to work with and it's often surprising what the results are. Like I said earlier, sometimes it's fantastic and sometimes it's horrible, but isn't that the way it goes with any camera?

So here we go, as the Start¹ puts it, "I see you brought your dancing shoes, well lets see if you know how to use those things."

_{1 Shakedown if you're interested}

Actually, There Is a Thing for That...

So to begin, yes, I know there is no photo, and yes, I know you were expecting the annual photo a day with the start of the new Julian calendar. It's coming, and I did take a picture today, you just can't see it yet. You see, I'm not done with the roll yet.

To take a step back, I'm sure you've heard the little slogan, "There's an App for that." Well, specifically, I've noticed a few apps for recreating things like plastic lenses, old film, even things like the light leaks found in an old plastic camera, like a Diana or a Holga.

Well, I got news for you, you tech savy hipster. There is a thing for that. It's called a plastic camera! It already has a plastic lens, it already uses film, and low and behold it already does weird things with the exposure. It is a physical thing! You can hold it!

So, because I haven't done it in a while, and against all of my better judgment, this year's Photo a Day will be by holga. And because I happen to be not made of money, I will take one photo a day with my Holga. Just one. And I will post it here, later.

What does this mean, exactly? Well, for starters, that means no photo a day will be posted until after every day has been developed, so later. Probably February. Also, this means that not every image will be a gem. Some may be completely over exposed, or so under exposed that the image will be black. The composition may be imperfect (as is often the case with old range finder cameras) and there may be scratches on the negative, light leaks, or just weird things that pop up when processing.

So now, the big question is, why? Cause I'm nuts. That's probably an acceptable answer, but the truth behind all of it, just ask yourself "How many photos do I take" and then ask yourself "Out of those, how many of them are any good?"

"One in a Thousand." In the age of digital, you can take a thousand pictures to get one good one because there's no real "cost" to it anymore. People don't take the time to see the shot they want in their head before they push the shutter. They just push and maybe they'll see something that works. And I guess that's fine, if you don't mind doing all the editing on the back end.

So what this is, it's about getting "One in One," about slowing down, about being as certain as I can be when I push the shutter.

So that's that. I assure you that I'm shooting. I mean I spent a half hour in the film cooler at Denver Pro Photo debating what film I should even use, so yeah, I'm shooting. I can't promise it will be perfect, but I can promise it will be real.

The First Shadow

Last year, we glimpsed the never ending battle of Dinosaurs. This year seems to be casting a long shadow, or we may be standing too close to the light.

Dinosaurs Vs...Day 1

When I was little, there was one force in the universe that could bring everyone together. It didn’t matter what faith, what race, what nationality; this one thing unified all peoples for the greater good. That force was…DINOSAURS. And so it begins. Inspired (or mayhaps, “egged on”) by my good friend over at the Hobbsblog, today we begin the battle for the safety of the world. Everyday this month we will see the campaign to achieve victory over these heinous foes. There will be casualties, primarily me, as each day there will be a brand new image in the series, taken that day, processed and posted by midnight. You may (likely not) be wondering why I don’t just do the “photo a day” thing. For one thing, I need the focus. Keeping with a theme will provide that. The goal is to complete a series of well done shots. I’m not interested in putting together anything less. I don’t expect all of these shots to be masterpieces, but I know effort will be expected to make something of value. Yes, that can be done with a simple “photo a day” method, but as I’ve said. I need the focus. And I’m sure this will be way more interesting than 31 photos of my kitchen utensils. So, as they say “Let’s kick this pig.”

Dinosaurs Vs. Optimus Prime and the Green Army