Holga

Women’s March Holga Portraits

Photography

I mentioned a few posts back that I wanted to start taking portaits with my Holga. I decided to take my Holga with me to the Women’s March in Sandy, Oregon two Sundays ago.

I stocked up on some cheap film: Arista.Edu 400. I really regret it because these didn’t turn out great. There are light leaks (I got a fat roll because the tape at the end of the roll wasn’t sticky) and there are some frame numbers showing through. Regardless, I enjoyed taking them and I it was really nice to get out of my comfort zone and ask strangers if I could take their photos. I am pleased with them in that regard.

Group Shot, take 2
God is a Woman
Thank You
Love makes America great
The Photographer
Cathy with umbrella
Generations
Group Shot, Take 1

Life is beautiful

Life, Photography

I have been really quiet over here, and I really don’t know what to say about that. I think when I stop posting on my blog regularly the void is filled with other things. And then dust starts to settle.

After blogging about my questioning of the “Spark Joy” method of de-cluttering I went down a rabbit hole that I am still in and I would love to write about it. So stay tuned for a post about that. And I really need to do some kind of year end wrap up post, because this is happening very soon.

In the meantime, here is a Holga shot from my most recent roll. This is the last recent photo I have in my Flickr photo stream so I need to get to developing and scanning some film so I can share some more!

Holga Portraits

Photography

I’ve been wanting to do a series of portraits using my Holga and have been working on it half-heartedly for the past year. I’m not very good at asking people if I can take their portrait so I’ve let a lot of opportunities slip by. But I can usually count on my photography friends to say yes. So here is a small series of portraits that I took the day I got my Woodblak camera (which I shared with you last week). These were all taken at Cathedral Park in St. Johns, Portland.

Gretchen
Gretchen
Ron
Paul
Paul
Colby
Colby

As I was finishing up the roll I had a problem with winding the film and something weird ended up happening to my camera, which resulted in the light leak. I am really hoping I didn’t break my camera!

Regardless,  I am pleased with how these turned out and I really want to do more of them.

Thursday Doors

Life, Photography

Back in the olden days of my early twenties I took a photography class while I attended community college. At the time I took a lot of pictures of doors. For some reason I was obsessed with doors. I remember one time I was out shooting in San Francisco (where i lived at the time) with a non photography friend. I took a lot of door photos that day. For some reason this made her grumpy and she made some kind of mean comment about my choice of subject and said that she never wanted to accompany me on one of these photo walks again.

She was kind of a mean person.

Anyway, her comment was obviously discouraging and made me not want to photograph doors anymore because I had this weird desire to please people that I cared about, rather than follow my own interests.

As I grew older, I said, fuck that and fuck that so called friend. I want to take pictures of doors, I’m taking pictures of doors. So here is one of them, shot with a Holga in the small town I live in, Sandy, Oregon. This is the front door of the historic white church in our town. The church is now a yoga studio owned by an Irish lady and is also the home of our sangha on Wednesday nights when we meditate.

I noticed awhile ago that this is a thing, this taking pictures of doors, and it’s a blog theme for Thursdays. So I think I am going to try to dig out those old photos and share them with you next week.

Life and Music Are On My Mind

Life, Photography

My birthday is on Sunday, and I’m getting old. I can’t think of a better theme for this post than a graveyard. 😉

All kidding aside, this is the only photography I have to offer this blog at the moment. My photo mojo has waned a little this year. This is from the roll of Holga shots I took when I went on the photo meetup in January. My plan was to shoot portraits with my Holga, which I did. But they didn’t come out great. I may post them next week and talk a little bit more about it. In the meantime, here are a couple moody shots of the graveyard from that day.
gravesite gift

Lone Fir Cemetery

A little story:
About an hour ago I was talking to a former coworker who has retired. She’d just learned, from another co-worker, that my birthday was this weekend and asked how old I will be. I gulped and said it out loud: “49. I’ll be 49.” And holy shit. It was hard to say that number  (It’s hard for me  to type that number). I told her that it was difficult to face the fact that I am in my last year of my 40s. She just kind of smiled and said, “you’ll get over it soon.” And she had a look of wisdom in her eyes.

When I walked out of the library for my walk this was the first song that popped up on my iTunes. An odd bit of synchronicity. 🙂