Holga 120N

Mia

My father and I both shot a lot of our photos with his old Konica 35mm. I also owned a Kodak instant camera for a while and a Kodak disc camera. Apart from those cameras, I never really owned a camera and I didn’t do any other photograpy. Digital photography changed everything for me, though. From the first time I picked up a digital camera, I was hooked.

At first, it was the freedom from film and developing that enticed me. I felt liberated. I could take as many pictures as I wanted to take and see them right away. While still just doing little more than snapshots for memories, I began to see that there was great potential at my fingertips. In time, as the quality of digital improved, I found myself dissatisfied with merely snapping images, I wanted to make great compositions. Oh sure, my subjects would largely be the same familiar sights of any common vacation photo album, I just wanted my versions of those snaps to be excellent photographs that people would truly enjoy seeing.

Understanding very little other than the rule of thirds and armed with a simple point-and-shoot, I ventured forth to get good at photography. I made that camera my constant companion, photographing every scene imaginable. I aggravated my wife, exasperated my friends, and confused every stranger I passed (some would argue that I still do all of this to this day). I took photo after photo, packing my hard drives full of images of every sort. I never edited or re-touched any of my images back then, I just worked hard at getting good pictures and I kept every thing I shot, good or bad.

I guess by this point, I should be saying that one day it all came together and I was a real honest to goodness photographer. Maybe I should be able to say that I’ve even become a professional photographer, a portrait taker, or photo-journalist. But, the fact is that I’m really just still taking photos with a very nice camera (another point-and-shoot, not a DSLR) and I’ve since learned to edit myself and to see the creative possibilities of the digital darkroom.

I tried film again with the Holga 120N. I took two rolls worth of film and ended up spending about $60 for the camera, film, developing, and printing and only got about 6 useable shots and 2 decent ones. In one way, it was a lot of fun to shoot in such an “old school” way, especially with a camera as odd as the Holga, but in many ways it left me dissatisfied. The lack of control and the delay of gratification held no charm for me. It was tenable in the days when you had no choice, but I prefer to live in the present, and in the present we have no need to torture ourselves with long waits for bad results. I want to know that I’ve got the shot when I take the shot, that way I can take the shot again if I need to.

The artifacts of film that are so desirable to so many photo artists were only ever really flaws in an imperfect system that we had to bear with until something better, like digital, came along. I recreate some of these flaws to enhace my images and give them more interest, but I often wonder why it should be necessary to mar an image to give it greater life. Oh, I certainly understand that imperfection bestows character, but I fail to clearly see why we embrace it so. Are we becoming starved for raw natural analog processes? Do the imperfections, no matter how fake, somehow give us comfort, putting at ease our sense of a loss of control and nature? Is it all just cool to look at? I hope my photos are at least that.