Many, many years ago I received a fabulous graduation gift from my brother and his wife: a Holga camera. For those of you that aren't familiar with this camera, let me explain it to you. It's called a "toy camera" and is lumped into the "lomography" genre of photography. You have to load the film into the camera in the dark, and manually wind the film after each shot. There is no light meter, so you must truly understand exposure to get the images to turn out properly exposed. Light leaks and imperfections create really interesting photographs.
This summer my daughter Maya took an interest in photography. She was my assistant at a wedding, and took some beautiful shots. For Christmas, I gave her a black Holga of her own, along with a six pack of Kodak Portra film. We have both been using her camera with varying results. Some rolls have turned out fantastically, and others, um, not so much. That's part of the learning process though! With film, and the costs of developing it, you do want to "get it right" as much as possible. It pushes you to think about not only a balanced exposure and composition, but also about "is this worthy"? In other words, is this image, this scene, this moment in time, worthy of a shot? With a roll of 12 or 16 exposures, you really take that into consideration.
Okay, okay, so now I'll get to the point. I wasn't feeling very inspired for a while. But I decided to get out there with a camera and shoot. The more I did so, the more inspired I became. Now I feel that I can't get enough photography time. So, if you are feeling unmotivated or that you have "photographer's block", just get out there! See what beauty you can find in the world!
All images copyrighted 2016 by Melanie Rapp and Artiste Photography. No reproductions allowed.
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