Holga Blog

Hi folks, I’m Arneee and I am also photo addict.

Most probably you should associate me with this image (No more jumps by arneee ), as seen in this holgablog.com post.

The little Apple at my Flickr username shows my favourite fruit (joke) and platform I mostly work on (not a joke). My intro comes late due to my favourite Macbook Pro 17″ graphics card failure… but now when the computer’s back I have access to all of my work and leisure (and holgablog.com, too).

My favourite color is yellow & I love when there’s lot of snow & everything that goes in with these elements. I reside in Baltic States, Northern Europe. My daily work is tied to architecture, design, civil aviation design, graphics & photography. I am currently writing a PhD on “New Digital Systems in Contemporary Architecture”. The work involves lots of conceptual experimenting of the newest tools available and therefore I would put another yellow image here – concept for a flower shop.

From this moment onwards I will talk on and around photography. Well, I am currently at my desk, next to two boxes full of photo negatives dating back to 12 and more years. I shoot also digital since year 2000, so it makes another stack of dvd:s nicely dated and organized, keeping them all also in backed-up external hard disk. According to personal records & statistics I believe I have shot between quarter to half million images in my life, in various occasions & with different gear. In one moment I was about to loose the smell of real film, to be more precise, when two and half years ago I got my first DSLR (read: Nikon D-200). But now, after fighting with excess gigabytes & floods of images which have been shoot, shoot, shoot… made me make a step back. I have cleaned up and renovated my 35mm cameras (currently Nikon EM, 1979 & Minolta X-300, 1986), bought Holga 120GN, Diana F+… and even built a matchbox pinhole to explain some of the basics in photography to the loved ones. The image below shows my favourite pinhole diptich with a strong yellow stripe (read: light leak). This image tells some story behind: driving to post office to pick up my Holga and the Holga in it’s intact package as it arrived by post from Hong Kong.

I use refrigerator for food, so my bookshelf is full of some expired: Fuji 35mm (ISO 400 & 800), Tudor 35mm (ISO 200), fresh: Chinese Lucky-branded bw 35mm (ISO 100), Kodak bw400cn 120 (ISO 400), and a stack of Shanghai GP-3 bw 120 (ISO 100). And at every occasion I think twice, either to go digital or film. Recently due to the characteristics of the occasion it has been film & I simply love shooting my Holga with 35mm sprocket holes or classic & proven 120 format.

Who’s the last to smile?

Now I’ll get to the point. So who’s the last to smile? I know that you should not judge upon someone of his camera. Or that it does not look “professional”. The more I carry around my Holga, the more I get such reactions from people.
One nice weekend I happened to be on one of my friends birthday party with quite respectable guests. The event was at least so classy that the hosts decided to have a professional photographer around to catch every moment here and there. As to what I saw later on by his results, they were thriving and digital imagery numbers showed that pure material was around 1700 to 1800 images. He uploaded one third to a server, sharing his work. Well.. when I showed up at the party (also a bit late) with my Holga, and only one film set to go, I knew it is going to be long night and I can limit my creativity to 12 images. Most of the guests were smiling on my “gear” and to the fact that I composed something, but left unshot & moved on. The photographer was curious of my little “toy” and we had a discussion on his 12 (I suppose) Canon DSLR megapixels and my medium format film. As I met my friends boyfriend first time, he smiled and maybe even got a wrong impression of me, saying – I know what I should gift this guy in his birthday, pointing at my piece of plastic. The time flew by with interestingness and beautifully crafted & mixed cocktails, when I looked through that tiny red plastic window to see that I am at frame 11 already. Do I have any pictures of the friend with her boyfriend? Uh, a portrait? Two frames to go I grabbed photographers tripod, set up the lights & candles that were available and shoot the last two chances. Now, exactly one month later (due to my Apple being away to maintenance with all the scanned files), here in holgablog.com I am about to present these images, and believe me, I have so many megapixels to support my images, if these guys decide on big square format prints. I scanned the best ones at 2400 dpi resulting 62 megapixels, and my sky limit is 9600 dpi – and my ability to math the megapixels here comes too short. And the best of it all – I know that negatives are physical evidence of your physical work put to capture one (or more) moment in the fast life. Look further and see the image 11 and 12, each followed by image how it was taken (courtesy of Marcis Baltskars, www.mbart.lv).

Image 11

Image 12

I am sure these images and my introduction will give you some impression of me.

I’ll be back soon wih some how-to’s, gadget comparisons and irregular trip notes (far & not so far destinations). And remember to carry your Holga (or another camera) around all the time, loaded with film and finger at the release button!!!

Have fun!

Arneee