Rant #2

For anyone that might care about such things I consider my first rant to be my post about the Holga, “Why Holga.” Now it seems I may have to “eat my words” on that one. I stress the “may” part because although I am now the proud owner of a Holga I have yet to complete my first roll of film. If I do end up as impressed or infatuated with the Holga as everyone else I will gladly admit the error of my thinking and enjoy entry to medium format film photography for under $30.

After all, what good is writing a blog if you can’t rant & rave from time to time - even if you do have to recant later!

With that in mind I have been looking at what passes for photographic art on a couple web sites lately and I freely admit that don’t get it! Maybe I don’t have an artistic “bone in my body” but I’m sorry,  pictures that look like someone accidentally tripped the shutter at a random scene, shots of dubious composition, or pictures that are out of focus or hard to figure out exactly what you’re looking at just don’t do much for me!

I understand abstract. I even like some abstract art but for me to acknowledge a photograph as art, abstract or not, it has to say something to me besides, “this is a really bad picture masquerading as art!”

Now having said all that I must also admit that I have spent some time looking at Holga pictures on other web sites that make me believe the Holga may in fact be capable of producing “good pictures.”  The images are “soft” of course and lacking the level of detail one normally associates with medium format photography but they also have a unique Holga quality kind of like the old box cameras but with a modern twist that may  be as much the result of modern film & processing techniques as anything else.

Of course this is all premature speculation until I actually take some pictures with my Holga and get them back from the lab but having seen at least some impressive Holga pictures I now have “Holga hope.”