Holga

When I was in college, almost every year our professors would challenge us and get us away from the expensive equipment, and tell us to make a strong image with a $15 toy camera. This was always one of my favorite assignments. My favorite toy camera is the Holga. It literally is a plastic camera, but the cool thing about it is, that it takes medium format film. Yes. Film. The entire back of the camera comes off to insert the film, and in doing that it sometimes has light leaks, which create cool effects on your images. This camera is also awesome because it is all totally manual. You can forward the film yourself, which really means that you can do panoramic images, double exposures, and whatever your silly mind can think of. I could seriously talk for hours about this camera. I used to work in a camera store, and a co worker of mine called me the "Holga girl" because whenever I sold one, I would talk forever to the customer about it. I almost always keep my Holga in my purse, when my friends aren't borrowing it, and the image above is a recent image I took in my kitchen when I was cooking. I got some really fun images out of the few rolls of film I took.

Recently, I have noticed that it is "hip" to be a photographer. I know it is "hip", I am a self proclaimed awesome "hip" photographer. Insert sly ego comment here... All in all though, I have noticed that these toy cameras are being sold in clothing stores, that are marketing to the hipster, indie, too cool for school generation. The funniest part about it, these stores are selling these cameras, literally for 7x the normal cost. I think it is silly, but at the same time, I wish I was that smart to up sell my stuff. Odd.

I think I will stick to my $15 camera, and my own "hip" creativity.

Food is Art is Life