It feels like it has been ages since I’ve taken one of my Holga cameras for a spin around the neighborhood. Or in the case of this photograph, a spin around downtown Los Angeles.
Every so often I like to just hop on a plan and head down to Southern California for the fun of it. Plane tickets from Portland to LAX can be incredibly cheap if you look hard enough - less than $40 each way. Rent an economy car and a Super 8 Motel and you’re golden for a few days of walking around, soaking in some sun, and making some photographs in an iconic American city. Pretty much the perfect vacation in my book.
On this particular trip the only camera I brought with me was the Holga. Even more unusual is the fact that I spent the better part of a day just walking up and down the street of downtown Los Angeles. I’m typically more of a Venice Beach kind of a person but I was in the mood for some grime. It was good that I brought plenty of Kodak Tri-X film with me because despite all the sunshine in LA, the downtown area seems to be in perpetual shadow thanks to the multitude of high rises, office towers, and apartment buildings. This image might seriously be the most perfectly exposed Holga image I’ve ever done.
Looking at this image gives me the urge to use my Holga again. I think it’s been at least a year since I’ve run a roll of film through it and probably even longer since I’ve done anything I would deem as serious. That’s a shame. The Holga can be a really great tool for releasing some creative cobwebs thanks to the fact that it is more or less a point and shoot camera. Actually, I would say it is even less than that (in a good way…). Point and shoot cameras still tend to have some degree of precision or at the very least have a behavior that is predictable. The Holga, for all its lack of control and plastic components just tends to do what it wants to do.
Which ultimately means as the photographer, the only choice you get to make is whether or not to expose a frame and commit the moment to film.