This month we present Dave Salinas AKA Flickr’s the lowest fidelity. Dave is reknowned for his amazing skills with the Holgaroid!

It all started when good friend and fellow band member Nicholas Noeding Jr. took a flight from ALB, NM into Houston in the summer of 2008 to rehearse and perform a show as Day Of The Woman. This is when he began shooting photographs and talking about how awesome his Holga camera was. It wasn’t until a weeks later that Dave fell in love with those same images that would be the catalyst in a developing love affair with lo-fi photography. Having a decade of producing lo-fi music made for an easy transition into utilizing those same principles into images created by the Holga CFN. Having limited time (and patience) he added a Polaroid instant back to his Holga CFN. “The smell of instant chemicals puts such a smile on my face, its a total addiction. Its like Christmas time when you are a 9 year old boy with a room full of neatly wrapped toys just begging to be ripped open!” Having gone through packs and packs of film “wasting” shots as if they were digital, Dave developed the process of selectivity in his photographs. Often using a Canon G10 for a test shot before using a Polaroid frame on his subjects. Minimizing his ratio of filmwasting. “I would buy big lots of ID-UV film from EBAY every chance i could. I just knew there was only so much to go around being that this film was long out of production” Manipulating ID-UV became a sort of specialty, or signature. Having done some painting on canvas in his early adulthood, manipulating ID-UV was in a sense fusing painting and photography in his subjects. “Moving the chemicals around the print with your fingers gives you a total hands on approach to making instant film prints. It’s like painting blindly, with toxic chemicals.”

Aside from using instant film cameras, Dave has also shifted his focus on digital photography. Even though he has adapted the moniker “the lowest fidelity!” on his Flickr account, he has diversified his work flow with digital images as well. “I’m just starting to scratch the surface of digital photography. Its such a great contrast to the messy expired Polaroid films i’m used to dealing with. There is also a big challenge for me in digital photography to convey that same raw energy i get from instant film photography. I feel that shifting from lo-fi plastic lenses to lofty megapixels is an important process in the growth of my photography.” Covering a wide array of subjects in his photography, Dave has been interested in shooting abandoned buildings. “I like to imagine what life is like after humans are long gone from Earth. Every time i pass an abandoned building i cant help but think of all the great photographs that are just waiting to be captured inside. I turn into a photography rat, finding ways inside to document decay!”

Working at Camera Co Op in Houston, TX. Dave continues to learn and grow as a photographer. With the building of a personal darkroom on the horizon and possible exhibits later on this year, its going to be a busy year for Dave Salinas. “I’m so young in the game! Its very exciting and rewarding when you can look back only a year earlier and see how much you have grown as a photographer. There is so much ground to cover in what i want to accomplish in photography, i am constantly on the look for that next photo. Even when i don’t have access to my camera, i am taking mental photographs. I keep a notebook with addresses and places i see to come back to photograph at a later date. Sometimes the sky is not blue enough, or the lighting at the time of day is not right, so i put it on my hit list.” Another part of the process involves his bicycle. Often riding his bike with his tripod on the rear rack looking for photographs. “Yeah, this is going to be a good year for me. I feel like i am gaining momentum.”

Nitsa is a photographer, visual artist and author of numerous books centering on her “non-politically correct” photographic style. She’s been at it for a while, longer then the current Lomo craze anyway.  Her unorthodox approach was ahead of its time and the refreshing aspect is that Nitsa doesn’t make a big deal out of what camera she’s using and makes it a point to emphasize that it doesn’t matter what camera you use as long as it’s a working one.  That being said she does have a pretty extensive collection of cameras of various vintages, makes and models.

Glance through Nitsa’s website www.nonphotography.com gives advice on breaking the dogmatic chains of orthodox photography. There’s an extensive gallery of her work and a link to download her books if you don’t want to buy the real paper ones.  Her blog is titled Still Alive and features some brilliant techniques like making images with textures created by transferring negatives from a printed transparency medium onto paper using mod podge.  I haven’t had a chance to check out her books, but I believe they have more techniques in them as well.

Photography location: the big cities of America

Photography style: non-photography (no rules. street photography)

Photography education: none

Influences: none

Began to photograph: 2000

Why: To challenge the superficial myth of Los Angeles

Objective: searching for the real America

Future goal: photographing and documenting life in every major city in the US.

Camera: whatever

Recommended photography books: none

What I appreciate most about Nista’s work is that it’s not cynical.  So many street photographers focus on the ugliness of the world, she makes you feel like a casual observer taking a stroll through the city.

You can find her on flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nitsaa/

Name: Robert Holmgren
Location: Menlo Park, California
Hometown: Rockford, Illinois
Cameras: Holga 120N & 120FN
Favorite Film: Fuji Neopan 400
Favorite Food: In a photography questionaire? It would have to be Rice Krispies because of the snap, crackle and pop (hey don’t blame us! Wally Billignham made these questions up!)
Favorite Photographer: There are a ton of wonderful photographers that I admire. Rocky Schenck, Lee Friedlander, Edward Steichen and Irving Penn are stand outs. The Holga/toy camera world has produced a number of very interesting photographers I follow–including Becky Pendel, C. Gary Moyer, Kelly McCracken, Tom Burke, Gwen Coyne, David Niles, Laura Burllton and Gordon Stettinius. I’d love to get my hands on Nicéphore Niépce’s camera–talk about old skool.

Biography:
Robert Holmgren has shot assignments for a wide variety of publications such as Time, Newsweek, Fortune, and National Geographic. Much of this work involved environmental portraiture of prominent individuals. At the same time he has maintained a steady production of personal picture taking and is currently focused on producing prints from this work as well as in ongoing personal projects. He holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and his work is in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Michigan State University’s Kresge Gallery, the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. His portfolio website is robertholmgren.com.
Robert Holmgren says, “My interest in photography began first as a means of artistic expression. Only years later did it become my profession. Living in San Francisco during the rise of Silicon Valley created the opportunity of plentiful work for a variety of national and international magazines. Some time after the internet bubble economy had burst my own attentions had drifted back to a more personal sort of picture making, aided, perhaps, by the shift away from film based tools and towards digital photography. I purchased my first Holga and set about to both tame the Holga’s limitations and learn what it offered in reward. Since 2005 it has been my primary camera.

Robert’s website is here:

http://www.robertholmgren.com/

His flickr is:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43237269@N00/

Name: Luke Healey
Location: Ames, Iowa USA
Hometown: Victor, Iowa USA
Current Gear: Hasselblad 503cx, Leica M2, Nikon digital stuff, and lots of toy cameras and non-toy cameras from the 1950s-1970s.
Favortite Film: Kodak Tri-X
Favorite Food: Chinese
Favorite Photographer(s): Walker Evans, Ralph Gibson, Weegee, Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, Diane Arbus… The regulars. I like studying what these people were bringing to the table so well. I believe most of us ‘Holga Photographers’ have a little bit of William Eggleston in us.

Luke Healey was born and has lived in Iowa his entire life. Raised in rural America in relative seclusion, he has been fascinated with the decaying relics of people who occupied the land prior to his existence. A fan of anything abnormal, he seeks out most things most people would ignore or find insignificant. He enjoys bringing these visions to a fixed state with his photography and hearing the same people who ignore such scenes voice their appreciation of the photographs.

His photography background is very fragmented but started at age six when he was given a Minolta 110 camera for his birthday. It took him four years to shoot one roll of film because he thought it was only for use on special occasions. Those occasions would turn out to be when he captured a leopard frog and kept it in a box in the garage and then later a private night spent with the family dog the night before his dad took him to the veterinarian to be put to sleep.

At age sixteen he had carefully crafted his high school schedule to include about three hours of study hall per day. One of the school’s teachers decided Luke needed something better to do with his time than play cards and gossip with his friends. She told him to make his way to the darkroom to learn how to print photos for the school’s yearbook. The darkroom was an old nurse’s station that measured 8×8 feet and contained a radiator and one window. The instructions for developing film and printing paper were written on a faded note card stuck to the wall. Proceeding with this minimal amount of information, Luke did indeed develop all of the film exposed by his classmates and made prints of every frame for use by the yearbook crew. Many hours were spent in this darkroom where he inhaled developers, stop bath, and fixer.

College was right around the corner and Luke still had zero working knowledge of camera usage. During his four years of college he was more concerned with making sure people were not taking photos of the things he was up to than with photography itself. During his senior year of college in 1999 he was using eBay to buy and resell items to pay his rent. One of the items he picked up cheap was an Argus c-four rangefinder camera. Taken back by its durability and beautiful simplicity as a machine, he held onto it. It was a metal fetish item to be stashed away for a later date.

Roundabout 2003, Luke purchased his first Sony point and shoot digital camera where he became a snapshot hobbyist with a machine gun shutter finger. A rare and fateful event happened in November, 2004 in that the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) were visible to the naked eye as far south as Iowa. Luke knew that he had to take this visual treat in with his camera and for the first time made the switch from green arrow to manual control. Once he figured out how to make thirty second exposures with the camera it was all over.

A crash course online to learn what ISO, shutter speed, and aperture meant revealed to him that he now had enough knowledge to operate any of the old cameras he had laying around the house. Armed initially with his trusty pocket camera, the Argus c-four, and a couple of Yashica Electro-35 cameras he’d bought at GoodWill, and a Kodak Brownie Rainbow 2c box camera from an estate sale, he was now off to the races. Learning so much, so quickly, it consumed most of his waking hours. Photography has been on his mind ever since. Luke enjoys collecting many types of cameras ranging from plastic toys to serious professional gear from the days of yore. He does not spend much money on modern digital equipment because he finds himself satisfied with film photography while it’s still a viable option.

Luke’s first Holga was purchased in 2005 thanks in part to his friends on flickr using them and revealing the intriguing nature of plastic lens photography. The Holga was truly a modern throwback to simpler times and he enjoyed the fact that it had a wide lens as it is his nature to photograph most things wider than normal. Along side his Holga, he was also sporting a converted flipped lens Brownie Hawkeye Flash camera which was copied from flickr’s own e50e’s camera. Both cameras are capable of the similar ethereal effects in photographs.

In 2006 Luke started developing and printing film and paper in his home. The rest has been a downward spiral into gear acquisition and continual skill building as a hobbyist photographer who secretly takes the hobby very seriously while trying to project a flippant outward personality towards his obsession. After burning through a lot of nicer cameras, he eventually settled into his two favorite camera kits, a Hasselblad V system for medium format and a Leica M system for 35mm film.

The rest as they say is interconnected history. Luke has burned up hundreds of feet of film and has several thousand frames of photo negatives collecting in piles around the house as well as binders when he feels pangs of organization guilt. Luke primarily presents his work as scanned images on flickr but likes to spend time printing in his darkroom. His intended goal is to hone his skills far enough to be seriously considered an artist or at least a technical craftsman who is credible enough to teach anybody that wants to sit down and listen to him.

My personal favorite Holga photo. I was guessing at the framing since I wear glasses. I was on my honeymoon and I'd been waiting forever to see these art deco sculptures in person at the Hoover dam

I think of Holgas as great cameras for storing memories. The vignetting draws your eye into the center of the frame to focus on the subject and gives the photo that dream-like appearance which all of our memories eventually fade to. Therefore I think it's good to snapshoot the things you love with cameras like this. This is a photo of my wife and a couple of our scooters

People use the term 'Happy Accident' to describe their unexpected results with the Holga. I happen to have a good example of that right here. I took this photo while I was driving my '54 Ford to my wedding. I was alone in the car driving down a gravel road and snapped the shot. The photo reveals the car and the weather which is what I wanted. However, I got the added prize of having my own reflection in the rear view mirror and the weird doubling up of the wooden moon ornament that hangs on my mirror. Some sort of optical flaw in the plastic lens. Truly a shot I'll enjoy looking at several years from now

Here's one of those lo-fi Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash photos. They're sort of a twisted cousin of the Holga. The edge of the frame is out of focus, but it's because it's a hyper macro focus. I'm sure you creative types could think of some neat compositions using this camera setup

As my photography skills improved my desire for bigger, better, sharper came to light. I bought a Yashica-A TLR camera and made some satisfying photos with it. This is an early one

I was still using 35mm cameras more often than medium format, however and managed to bring this shot home one evening. It's one of my favorites

I enjoy 35mm because it's portable. I always more open to see the most pleasing things when I'm not lugging around 30 pounds of medium format kit. This photo was made with a Graflex Graphic 35 rangefinder. This was a moment when I proved to myself that it doesn't matter how grainy your film is or how cheap your camera is, that you can get a pleasing image suitable for hanging right in your bathroom with almost any setup

However, you can still open up your mind and try to take in every little detail around yourself. Sometimes even when you are carrying the big kit around, the world presents itself to you in a way it wouldn't for most other people simply going about their day to day business. The ice giraffe was only about six inches tall, hiding in the back of an alley on a thawing winter afternoon

In my opinion, you don't need to be Ansel Adams to make art. Humans seem to be attracted to symetry, patterns, and sharp contrast. Sometimes very simple images tend to generate more interest than shots of busy compositions you take a long time studying

Though I rarely shoot color positive (or negative) film, I probably should do so more often since the results have typically been very nice and somewhat magical in terms of the colors. This is an example of slide film that I'm quite fond of. It could just be the impact of having your loved ones contained in the frame though

In more recent time, I have been shooting less often and with more intention than in the past. I study light and shadows. The photos I find the most satisfying most likely bore most people. I've begun to become obsessed with the technical aspects of proper exposure where I must not murder shadows or highlights. The result of some of my photos are pleasing to me technically, but rather boring in terms of telling a story, or addressing any sort of social commentary I'd like to mark my time on earth with

The big payoff for being a tech nerd is that I can pretty much envision what my film photos are going to turn out like before I even make the photo with the camera. This is a recent example of a photo I decided to go for when walking down an alley. I loved the textures present and the way the light was hitting them in a manner that was harsh yet pleasing. Where 'Happy Accidents' once had their place in my soul, I've gravitated to complete zen-like understanding of my equipment so I can control the process as much as possible and share my vision with all of you lovely people just the way I wanted to while I was standing there making the picture

This month we introduce C Gary Moyer, toy camera photographer extraordinaire, pizza eater, and Light Leaks column writer.

Name: C Gary Moyer
Location: Maywood, NJ
Hometown: Pottstown, PA
Current Gear: over 100 cameras- toy and vintage making up the majority.
Favortite Film: Kodak BW400CN
Favorite Food: Pizza
Favorite Photographer(s): Keith Carter, Mark Sink, Rocky Schenck, Susan Burnstine

C. Gary Moyer has always been concerned about getting the sharpest picture. A detour thru Keith Carter and Mark Sinks imagery changed all that. He now spends most of his time shooting, collecting, and writing about plastic cameras. Catch his regular column- “Garys Toy Box” in Light Leaks magazine.

You can also view Gary’s blog here.

Somehow we managed to miss last month’s POTM, but we can reveal we have an action packed next few POTM, with some amazing photographers taking us up to Christmas.

This month, we present the work of Thom Perry, photographer, designer, and Aussie (although we won’t hold that against him ).

Name: Thom Perry
Location: Western Australia
Hometown: Perth
Current Gear:
-LC-A+
-holga
-Diana with polaroid back
-pentax mz
-zenit e
-Zeiss Ikon Contessa
-Zeiss Ikon Contaflex
-Polaroid 600
-Yashica EM
-Kodak Junior 620 (converted to 120)
-Minolta Dynax
-Mamiya RB67
-Sony A900

I’m not even going to start on all the lenses…

Favortite Film: For 120 colour – Provia100. For 120 B+W – Lucky sdh100. For 35 – astia100. Almost all the slide I use gets the xpro.
Favorite Food: Blue cheese, on pretty much anything.
Favorite Photographer(s): Somewhere between Helmut Newton and Jill Greenburg.

Thom is a photographer who died at age 28, in the year 1468AD. Which makes his photography all the more impressive seeing as he died such a long time before the medium was invented. He sustained his lifestyle shooting advertising images for insurance companies and government departments. Whilst away from the bustle of the glossy industries he took his deepest pleasure in shooting pictures on film of nothing in particular with old cameras that were yet to be invented. You can see more of Thom’s work at http://www.teepeedesign.com.au/ and his flickr is at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomperry/ .

What a fantastic cross-section of Thom’s work, incredibly varied, across many different mediums, but all still with a certain style and cohesion. Thanks for sharing Thom.

This month, we introduce James Arnold AKA Plastic Fantastic. A long-running favourite among the Toy Camera community.

Name: James Arnold
Location: Bicester, England
Hometown: York, England
Current Gear: Holga 120 GCFN
Favortite Film: Kodak Portra 400 VC 120
Favorite Food: Cheese
Favorite Photographer(s): Er…

James is a small, bald photographer, graphic designer and illustrator from Northern England. He likes cheese and pickle sandwiches, composting, and holidays in Cornwall. General hobbies include cycling along country lanes, feeding garden birds, playing the ukulele, and starting small fires.
To view more of James’ work, please visit:
www.jamesarnoldphotography.com/
www.flickr.com/photos/plasticfantastic/
plasticfantastic.my-expressions.com/
James has also just released a cracking wee book entitled ‘Holga Photography’, which is available via Blurb.

cow tuesday number 1

Anthony Gormley's Another Place

Uffington white horse, Oxfordshire

summer 2007, tenby beach, wales

remembrance sunday 2007, church street, bicester, england

Real – souvenirs – photos, Clachan Bridge, The Bridge Over The Atlantic Ocean, Scotland

port isaac ice cream in a car park, cornwall, england

snow in a field near Stratton Audley, Oxfordshire, England

striped umbrella on tendy beach, wales, uk

Dungeness picture 14, Dungeness, Kent, England

old blue caravan, leashaw wood, holloway, derbyshire, england

Dungeness picture 15, Dungeness, Kent, England

Door number 4, Seacliff Holiday Park, Minster on Sea, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, England

tree at stowe landscape gardens, buckinghamshire, england

To kick start our new ‘photographer of the month’ series, we have one of the most innovative holga photographers out there…

Wallace Billingham was born and raised in a small town called Laurel in Maryland halfway between Baltimore and Maryland. As a child in the 1970s it was much more rural than it is today. One of his greatest joys as a boy was playing in the deep woods and along the creeks that ran behind his house. Several times a year he would get to visit his mother’s family in rural Virginia in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and his father’s family along the rocky cost of Maine. During these trips his love for the water and the natural world grew very deep.

His love for flowing streams was formed at a young age when he would accompany his Uncle Wallace (whom he was named after) along the flowing streams of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The two would often hike for many miles and spend all day out in the woods. Uncle Wallace also showed him the magic of photography and darkroom work. During High School he continued to work on photography taking classes at his school, and working with a wedding and event photographer as an assistant. It was a great part time job while going to school.

He left Maryland and lived in Colorado and Ohio for a while before settling in North West Pennsylvania almost 15 years ago. One of the great things about living there was the woods and streams. The area was heavily glaciated during the last ice age and that has left behind lush green valleys full of hardwoods and countless flowing streams bubbling over the rubble left behind from the rivers of ice.

He struggled for a long time to find a camera system to capture the mood and feelings he had when he was out in the woods and streams. He loved to shoot with Large Format B&W film and create B&W Images but was always afraid to take such cameras close to the water and the difficulty of moving and carrying such cameras around in the deep woods was a struggle. Smaller format cameras were very portable but did not yield the results he was looking for. Digital capture was interesting but electronics and water don’t mix well.

Along the way in his photography he found a Diana Camera at a flea market back in the 1980s and loved it. He would also shoot with lots of vintage cameras. At some point in the late 1990s he found out about the Holga and got one. He enjoyed using it very much but never took using toy cameras seriously. He found them fun to play with and he liked the results but at the end of the day they were just not serious enough.

That all changed for him a three years ago when Freestyle Photo and Efke brought back medium format IR820 Infrared film in Medium Format to the US market. If you ask him you he will tell you it started out as a whim. He ordered a few rolls and thought he would try them in a Holga. He looked all over the Internet and could not find any relevant information about them. So he wasted a few rolls trying to figure out the exposure but what he saw he liked so he ordered a few more. It turned out that using the Efke IR820 film with a Hoya R72 filter results in a really slow film, that when combined with a Holga create dreamy soft images with dreamy IR effects and unbelievable tonality. Over the next few months he discovered that the Holga and the IR film were the perfect choice to shoot what he wanted in the woods and in the streams. Since the Holga is so light there was no issues with bringing them into the field and since they do not have any electronics water is not a major concern.

Over the past 3 years he has adopted a special and unique workflow that he could really not have done with any other camera system. The first thing viewers notice is that just about all of his photographs are taken of water, upon a closer look you will find that most of them are taken from the water. He actually wades into the streams, lakes, and ponds he photographs sets up his tripod with the camera only a few inches above the water and makes the shot. Several times his tripod has fallen into the water and the Holgas take a deep dive but since they are not electronic they are good as new once they dry out. He also works very slow and methodical, using the same style of shooting that he did when shooing with large format gear.

Over the past few years in addition to several gallery shows, he has been honored to have his Holga work featured in several magazines including writing a regular feature for Lightleaks Magazine and was most recently featured in the March 7th 2009 edition of Amatuer Photographer Magazine in the UK. You can see more of Wallace’s work on his Gallery site at http://www.thoumyvision.com, or on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/eye_of_wally He also has an informational site where you can find more info about how he works at http://www.theplasticlandscape.com

Caramel Prisoner by JohnC

Holgablog will be soon starting a new monthly article featuring a chosen photographer every month.

There are two ways to feature:

1.If you would like to have your photographs shown, along with a brief bio/interview, email submissions@holgablog.com with a link to some of your stuff.

2.If you would like to nominate someone else’s photography, email submissions@holgablog.com with your chosen nomination and a link to their photos.

The nominations will be discussed by the holgablog writers and will be chosen for that month, although we will keep the others to go into the next month’s ‘pot’.

This isn’t any kind of elitist stuff going on here, feel free to nominate yourself or any other photographers. The more the merrier! It’s also not a competition: we just like democracy here at holgablog, so figured it was easiest for the writers to decide! All we ask is that the photographs comprise mainly of film photos (rather than digital).

To kick it all off, we are pleased to announce that Wallace Billingham, famed holga enthusiast and columnist for Light Leaks will be our first POTM.  Stay tuned for his photographs very soon!