Saturday, January 23, 2010

Monochrome Weekend: Ice

Ice Festival

Last week was the annual ice carving festival at Niles, Michigan. This sculpture was captured with a Holga 120N with Holga flash attachment--the finest flash $15 can buy. The flash happened to work on this shot. Since then, I've taken a pair of pliers to the hot shoe to improve contact with the flash and have increased the incidence of firing from about 50% to 100%. I love the challenge of shooting with plastic cameras.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least you don't get that awful feeling of doing expensive damage.

PJ said...

Holga on, it looks great! I've been itching to try one so I guess I just need to place my order.

Rune Eide said...

Holgas are a philosophy and although this one gave nice result, I think I'll stay with digital

PS And I got my first camera in 1965.

Unknown said...

Aileni, you're so right. I would never take a pair of pliers to the Nikon D90.

Paula, take the plunge. I think you'll like it. They've even started selling Holgas at the local camera store where I live.

RunE, yes, Holga is a state of mind. I'm not giving up on digital, especially for nature photography, as in this post.

#167 Dad said...

As a true photography novice, I enjoy checking out the work of someone who actually knows what he's doing.

Unknown said...

Buzz,

Something about your comment wants me to quote Groucho: "Why, a 4-year-old child could understand this. Run out and find me a 4-year-old child, because I can't heads or tails of it." Somewhere along the line, I heard about an expert on photography who showed some slides at a lecture and asked for comments from the audience. The audience was crazy about the pictures. When they completed their adulation, the lecturer explained the photos had been taken by his toddler daughter with her Fisher-Price digital camera.

The point, if there is one here, is having a beginner's mind goes a long way in any creative endeavor. That's one thing I like about the plastic cameras I've been using of late. You can't get too caught up in technical factors, because there's very little technology there. In the absence of knobs and wheels and buttons to fiddle with, you have more time to SEE the subject. You have that ability. Keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Neat shot. I've often wondered about those Holgas. Ever try the Diana? Actually I'd love to get my hands on a good quality used TLR. Had one a long time back.

SquirrelQueen said...

Nice result from a plastic camera, I have wondered about the Holgas. Thanks for visiting.

Unknown said...

Queen, thanks for stopping by.

John, I have picked up a few Dianas or Diana clones on eBay. They take a smaller square format image on 120 film--16 images per roll. I looked hard at the new Diana F+ kit that comes complete with interchangeable lenses, filters, flash, etc. It just seems that having so many options goes against the spirit of toy photography. The joy comes from working within, and overcoming, the limitations of the equipment. So, I'm sticking with Holgas (new ones--only slightly improved over the old ones) and old Dianas. I think I'll do a separate post soon about my Diana cameras, which all have different combinations of missing or nonfunctional features.

MyMaracas said...

Nice shot! We very nearly attended that festival last weekend. I bet I missed some good stuff, huh.

Unknown said...

Maraca,
The sculptures were interesting. There were a lot of people milling around, which was good for the local businesses. I went back up there today. The sculptures have melted beyond recognition and the streets are empty as usual. So it goes.

Dragonstar said...

Ice sculpture seems so foreign (even exotic?) to me, as normally our ice lasts a very short time! I like this shot.

Carver said...

What a beautiful old theatre. Great shot.