You Had Me At Holga

I got a Holga from my secret santa (my sister) and was the happiest person on earth.  I’ve been wanting one for a very long time.  It is a very light plastic camera.  I think even lighter than the 110 camera I used to have back in the 80’s.

Holga’s are supposed to produce dreamy distorted photos, or as worded here:

My sister even included a couple of medium format rolls of film.  This one is the black and white one.

I was so excited to use this camera but later learned that it was harder to have the film developed than expected.  I went to Mike’s Camera because it was the closest one to my house but I don’t know if that was the best place to go.  I heard Wolf Camera also develops medium format so I’ll have to give them a try next time.

I first used the black and white film because it was 400 speed and I was taking it indoors (my Holga is flashless).  Out of the 16 exposures, only 7 were developed because the others were probably exposed to light when I loaded and unloaded (I forgot I was supposed to do this in the dark), and out of the 7 photos, there was only one I would call decent.  Two other were not bad.

These are the photos:

The photos were scanned in black and white by my husband.  The actual photos have a tint to them, similar to this:

I added the the yellow/brown in photoshop to make it look as close to the actual picture as possible.  The photo is actually a little more bluish but I had a hard time trying to pull that color out.  Also, the graininess on the photos is from the dust on the flatbed scanner.

Before I end this post, I wanted to share a song I still love by Bruce Springsteen called, “Secret Garden” from, Jerry Maguire, a movie I also still love.