Bad influences, part one: The Holga
I believe I've mentioned that I am a big fan of Twisty Faster over at I Blame the Patriarchy.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I maybe had some kind of wild crush on her.
A while back Ms. Twisty mentioned that she'd acquired a Holga, and I started reading about them and decided I absolutely had to have one. Judging from the comments at Twisty's place, I was not the only one.
As you can see on this photo of my neighbor's lawn, the camera does all kinds of amazing things, what with the light leaks, and odd shadows around the edges, and the unpredictable focusing. I think this one, like the one below of poor dear Pirate Jenny, was shot on expired slide film and cross-processed. [Update: but the gal at the place where I had it processed says that they wouldn't have done that, that it must have been negative film, not slide film. But the negative says "fujichrome" on the edge, and all the other rolls of fujichrome film I have are slide film. Whatever. It looks cool.]
In addition to the camera, I also found & purchased a whole pile of expired 120 film on eBay.
I read somewhere or another that you could introduce even more randomness into the process by using expired film, plus it was extremely cheap.
This is Luna, one of Stella's buddies at the neighborhood pub.
I purchased the fancy version of the Holga; it has three [ahem, four] focus settings: you can select an icon representing one person, two people, a small crowd, and a mountain. There is nothing on there about dogs. Or yards.
But it's not entirely clear that changing the setting does all that much anyway, especially in daylight. 
It's certainly the case that what you see in the viewfinder bears only the slightest resemblance to the finished photo.
In this photo of my dear departed minivan, Pirate Jenny, the viewfinder was entirely filled by the van.
No background at all, and I was even afraid I wouldn't get it all in the frame.
I'm not sure what causes that weird little notch, or why it's sometimes on the top & sometimes on the bottom. But it's on all the pictures.
Anyway, I'm having a good time with it, but I can see this turning into an expensive hobby despite the initial $20 camera purchase. I'm going to use a lot of film and it will all have to be processed.
And I'm going to annoy everyone by photographing things incessantly.
Oh well. Thanks, Twisty!
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