August has been a busy month for
Holga (toy camera) weddings. By the time the month is done, I will have shot 3 full weddings this way...that's a lot. Each wedding probably yields 12 to 15 rolls of film (12 exposures per roll) and the scanning for such a project is
phenomenal. And then later on (someday) I need to clean the dust off of the scans, which takes about 20 minutes per image. For the past several days, my life is like this: for about 6 or 7 hours a day, I work on my house (scraping, sanding, painting). A few breaks for food, maybe a walk with the dogs, errands, maybe a run for me. Seriously, my life is bizarre right now. I haven't even been to the grocery store for weeks. Every day I run out of some key food item and then end up being very creative the next day because I can't tear myself away long enough to go shopping. At about 8pm, when it gets dark, I head upstairs to the computer and scan negatives until 12 or 1 in the morning. I head to bed and repeat the same thing the next day. The house is a big deal because I have to go back to my full time job...which means that M-F from 8 until 4, I can't do any work at home. And the 3rd
holga wedding is Aug 22, so the negs from the last one have to be done before I dive into the next one. Whew. And I just put myself back on Match.com...will I even have time to date?
Hmmmm.
This shot was taken with a tripod...you can see the motion blur of the people at the tables. I love that I can rig up the
Holgas with a cable release and it has a bulb setting. It is like finally having control over these cameras! (Normally the shutter and aperture are set, you can't vary them at all. Bulb setting means that I have control over the length of time that the shutter is open, vastly improving negative
exposure.)
I do gravitate towards the more bizarre moments at weddings when I have these cameras. :)
It's not perfect, but I love the guy holding shoes, a beer, and a baby. YES!!
Aaaah! I started playing with multiple exposures on the negatives, and not advancing the frame fully. (Does that make sense?) Each time I take a photo, the flash on a cable goes off, illuminating my subject. But on a darkened dance floor, that one thing is all that gets exposed- the rest of the negative space is still "
useable". SO, I repeat another exposure in a different section of the frame. And then again. Then I advance it almost all the way and repeat the process, and end up with a continuous strip of multiple exposures that hopefully work well together.
I have photographed almost 130 weddings now. These dresses were probably the most beautiful color I have EVER seen.
Tony and Nicole were really great to photograph. They are obviously very much in love, and I am so happy for the two of them!
Sammi and Paul were married on August 22nd, an exceptionally hot and steamy day in this part of the world. I had been asked to shoot with the Holgas that day, and came home with 21 rolls of film. That translates into 252 potential images. I have lots of processing, scanning, and editing to do, but I bet I will end up with about 150 edits. It will take weeks...this post is just 5 that quickly caught my eye from the color rolls that are currently on my light table begging to be scanned.
I think the cigar smoking and hanging out outside interested me the most. Girls with cigars! Who knew?
