Holga Blog

The long waited film swap project cooperation between Latvia and USA has become to an end. Final result 12:12 (meaning 12 exposed pictures on both frontiers). As the result is equal, probably we’ll need to run a second round !
My post is about a film swap that initiated around 2 months ago between Holgablog authors: me – Arneee and Veronica. The interestingness here is about unexpected results, with as little intrusion as possible (we were both only giving each other a small record on what is shot in the picture). Veronica shot an Ilford b&w film on her Holga and then sent it over from Minneapolis, USA to Riga, Latvia. I did shot a film also, then sent it over to USA, and apparently five days ago the results of Veronica already were here on holgablog.com so this is a Re: (reply, as often being used in e-mails) to her results.

Below is our collaborative result with some notes on who shot what. Please note that I always scan negatives in their full size, eg. including film up till its edges (mainly due to reason that I do not use ANY mask inside my Holga and I want to see all of the picture).

1 Veronica: mill city ruins // Arneee: swan

2 Veronica: mill city ruins // Arneee: old concrete stairs close-up

3 Veronica: mill city ruins // Arneee: swan

4 Veronica: mill city ruins // Arneee: lady feeding bunch of swans at river Daugava

5 Veronica: uphill shot to gold medal sign // Arneee: five storey housing street perspective and an old Mercedes minibus

6 Veronica: stone arch bridge // Arneee: new Southern bridge of Riga (supposedly the most expensive bridge per its cost of each built meter that has been ever built in Baltic States – total budget 1’000’000’000USD !!!)

7 Veronica: interesting house downtown // Arneee: nine storey house built around 80-ties

8 Veronica: tree with spring buds (7:30PM) // Arneee: concrete wall under construction in bright daylight (note that when shooting double exposures the two exposures have to be in more or less equivalent lighting, otherwise it’s like in this picture – the Veronica’s part can be barely seen in upper right edge, while my part is strictly dominant)

9 Veronica: antique bottle against skyline // Arneee: cement-conrete mixer

10 Veronica: Raine (Veronica’s cat) // Arneee: Jerry (Arneee’s dog) – an excellent example for a cooperation of film swap

11 Veronica: Minneapolis skyline // Arneee: beach of Riga Gulf overlooked through pines (I particularly like how the American traffic lanes pass sand beach of Saulkrasti)

12 Veronica: central lutheran church with trees // Arneee: sea waves and my dog in the water searching for his toy

Feel free to comment & share your opinions on film swapping.
End notice: the blog post’s title image features image No. 6 of this swap altogether with Freedom Monument of Latvia and Statue of Liberty of USA, lended from a books cover “Latvia and the USA: From Captive Nation to Strategic Partner”. I thing the book’s caption has some associativity with this blog’s post.

Cheers,
Arneee