Holga

Last Christmas, Donald gave me a Holga camera. Before that day, I had never heard of lomography. My first roll of film was almost a total failure. I was discouraged, but still thought it was the coolest thing ever. A plastic, piece of crap camera that could actually take real photos with unique vignetting was so novelty to me.

This semester, I am taking three art classes. By some strange twist of fate, I am in the same classes as my [now] best friend Austin. One day I brought my Holga to drawing to play with after class, and I found out that Austin had three Holgas of his own. Within the next few days we quickly used up my film, and couldn’t wait to get it developed! We were so excited when we found out that the photo shop in the bookstore developed 120 mm film. To top it all off, it was super cheap! Since the beginning of school, we have gone through at least ten rolls of film. After breezing through six rolls in two days, we decided we should probably ration our film use. After all, we are just poor college students who really can’t afford to spend 20 bucks on film per week!

Lets just say that playing with my Holga is my new favorite past time, and all of the prints are hanging up on my walls. My favorite pictures are the ones that have stories behind them. Whether it be a former lithium addict we met downtown, or an old man in the HFAC that asks us if we want our camera's to break when we asked if we could take his picture, the stories behind the pictures make it that much more meaningful.