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This treasure finally arrived on my porch today. Ooo…!

nan goldin

goldin’s intimate snapshots of drag queens, drug addicts, friends and family ooze chemical highs and gut-wrenching lows, passionate loves and tragic losses. to me, it is a new kind of fucking-amazing.

nan goldin is a documentary photographer. her works have grown on me firmly over time. i can confidently assume that without understanding her life and its context it’d be difficult to appreciate her work as a piece of art or anything more.

after weeks of searching i finally found a book on nan goldin; the devil’s playground. except it was the only copy the book specialist had and because nobody has ever wanted it it was in a storage room full of reduced books. the employee there said it would be impractical to go through all the books to find that particular book. i understood their stance. he said they’ll have a sale of reduced books later this month and that he’ll let me know as soon as the date is set. and when i do get notified, i will run there and geit it before some arty-farty-extravaganza geek put their hand on it.

Holga135, film types and re-using disposable cameras

firstly, i’m going to explore the wonders of Holga135 cameras. if you’ve ever owned a Holga of any kind (Holga120S, Holga120N, Holga starter kit, Holga pinhole, etc.), or even a Diana+ you will know, unless you’re unreasonably affluent or lazy with your photography, that the 120 medium format films cost effort and many monies in the long run. in my case i’ve been valuing the photographs over other opportunity costs. anyway, 120s are not as easy to find and often you will find photolabs rejecting you and your film.

the major advantage of the Holga135 camera is the fiscal efficiency and accessibility without losing any technical control. the quality of photographs is not an iota different/worse from that of Holga120s. however there are slight differences and little lump holes; inevitably with 35mm’s, the photos are no longer vignetted, this further means that there are no dark corners. this takes away the trademark of holga photographs; nostalgic and dream-like ambiance. but! we can overcome this. it’s a holga camera afterall. you can mod anything from aperture, close focusing, manually adjusted 6×6 format to interior flocking and way more. on my Holga135 i’ve done interior flocking to make a creative adjustment to my photographs. i won’t go into details now but i might post tutorials on several holga-modding ideas and tips. also, the Holga135 does not have a flash but it has a hot shoe. this means a venture. although you miss out on Holga coloursplashing joy for now (the ones you have on Holga120S and Holga120N with 9 original filters), you can always make use of the hot shoe whenever you’re ready. instead of the heavy-ass, million dollar elitist chunk of flash you can order small flashes through a decent local camera specialist. (or just generally use a high ISO film under limited lights). thus far you should know the cons and pros of Holga135 cameras, and what you can do about them. at the moment i have a 135DX ISO400 colour film from italy (if it makes anything special) loaded and ready to snap up a whole lot of wonderful things.

speaking of films, i was in the city today with a finished kodak elite chrome ISO100. it had photos from my first trip to casey’s farm and i was damn excited about getting them developed. funny joke, i was rejected from 4 photolabs. the reason was because the machines would suffocate from the incompatible chemicals slide films have. i wish people would realise the benefits and beauty of slide films so that demand of them will increase and in the long run there will be more supply of the films and E-6 chemicals which will lower the price of films and everyone will become happy. for your information, a decent slide film costs about $16.00 per roll, a 3 pack of ISO400 negative films costs $15.oo; according to published instructions ‘normal’ films are developed in C41 chemical and slide films are developed in E6 chemical. when you mismatch the film type and the chemical it becomes what is called ‘cross-processing’ or in short ‘x-pro’. a rather conservative and ignorant person will say it is totally wrong, but it is not. the colours reach its maximum vibrance and boast artistic individuality.

lastly, i do not have a frogeye camera. it is the only lomo camera that facilitates your photographic needs underwater With a flash. to get something close for the time being, since summer/pool time is here, i now have myself a disposable fuji underwater camera. crucial point is that they are not necessarily disposable. once i figure out how to open the waterproof casing, i will re-use it as many times as i want! here i will reveal a secret and you can apply this to any disposable cameras or disposable coloursplash cameras. all you have to do to re-use these so called disposable cameras is simple; usually film cameras tend to use films in first-in-first-out order. it pulls out the film as you shoot then wind back when you’ve finished. like my Nikon f55, disposable cameras do the opposite. they pull out the entire film first then winds it back; first-in-last-out. so just wind out your film first before you start re-using those disposable cameras. remember to do it in the dark too.