TOYCAM Best of 2010!

This week will be a short and sweet post.  First in case you hadn't heard the news Holga Inspire selected TOYCAM as one of it's 4 best toy camera photography book for 2010!  I think I speak for the whole book team when I say we are happy that the book has been so warmly received!

TOYCAM Best of 2010

Moving on, below find another image from my recent trip to San Fransisco.  Taken with my trusty Holga.  You really can't beat the Holga for an easy camera to carry around while on travel.  This image just goes to show you that with ISO 400 film you will have pretty good range of light levels you can shoot in.  Normally I load Ilford's HP5 into my trust Holgamods Holga with 2 apertures and I carry a 2 stop ND filter giving me 4 stops of shooting capability.  Here I shot wide open with no filter and you can see that I got some pretty good detail in the low light of the cafe.  With a bit of dodging and burning I was able to bring down the outside details and create some nice tones for this type of lighting.

 "Coffee Break"

Holga, Ilford HP5

TOYCAM is FOR SALE!!!

All the entire TOYCAM Book Team Blake, Bill, Jose, Jason, Gregory, Ben, Leah, and myself are pleased to finally announce the publication of the long awaited book!!!!

We would all like to extend a heart felt thank you to the entire toy camera community who supported this project from the start almost 16 months ago to now. None of this could have been accomplished without all of your enthusiastic support.

I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire book team for your dedication to this project. You have helped make this project much more than I ever envision 16 months ago when I proposed a book project on toycamera.com. I can't tell you what an honor it was to work with all of you!

Ok so here are the links to purchase your copy of the book:

Purchase the softcover version - CLICK HERE (SOFTCVR)
Purchase the hardcover version - CLICK HERE(HARDCVR)

For more information about the book and project checkout the WEB PAGE! The page will have more content soon so keep checking back in.

On another note, you may or may not have heard that the final copies of the book I received had an issue with the cover (see the image below and notice the stripe of dark blue around the illustrations that should not be there on the bottom book). We believe we have corrected the issue, but as the team has already spent quite a bit of money on proofs already we have decided to release the book without ordering another round of proofs. Ben is confident that there is no way this will happen with the new books. But if you do see this please let us know ASAP.



Finally if you purchase a copy please do send me your reviews and comments. You can post them here or send the to me at info@greenstphotography.com. The team plans to add a review page to the website so get your reviews in!

From the entire team, we hope you enjoy the book as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

TOYCAM - Release Date is....

We have set the release date for Monday September 13th! There is a chance that the date could be sooner so check back in often.

The final edits have been sent to the book designer. We are also working on the webpage where we will have pics of the actual book, links to Blurb, and eventually a few words about how the book came to be and some lessons learned for the next group of volunteers. We are also hoping to get feedback from all of you and we plan on periodically posting it up there as well.

TOYCAM - The Proof Book is in hand!

Here are a few teaser images from the proof copy of the book! All in all Blurb has really improved the print quality over the last few years. The book looks great! We just have a few tweaks to make and the final round of edits (we did make a proof print a bit early to make sure the images would print correctly). I still think we are looking at release the book for sale by th end of the Month or the first week in September at the latest. Please link to this Blog and spread the word around!

TOYCAM Update!

I hope that everyone is as excited as I am about the nearing of the publication of this book. I just sent out that 98.5% final version of the book to the team for their final edits and comments before we print the proof copy. I could have the proof copy in my hands as early as next week :)

A while back we released the design for the dust jacket of the book, it was met with mostly positive comments, but we did notice a few comments about the color orange. We were a bit divided on the team as well. It seem orange is one of those colors that people either love or hate. So we decided to change the color and ended up going with a blue that was inspired by the numerous shades of blue found on Diana's and all of her clones. We also reduced the size of the illustrations and added a few more. Other than that the cover is essentially just like what we showed you all a few months back.

TOYCAM - Last but not in any way least!

the sixth and last name on the interview list for the toycamera book TOYCAM - Lo-fi Photography. Over the past year the book team collected hundreds of names, viewed many web-pages, Flickr galleries, and toycamera.com galleries. In the end we only had room for 6 interviews in the book, though we would have loved to talked to so many more of you.
So everyone please congratulate Sean Rohde (aka moominsean! We thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about his photography.

TOYCAM - hang... um...5?!

the fifth name on the interview list for the toycamera book TOYCAM - Lo-fi Photography. Over the past year the book team collected hundreds of names, viewed many web-pages, Flickr galleries, and toycamera.com galleries. In the end we only had room for 6 interviews in the book, though we would have loved to talked to so many more of you.
So everyone please congratulate Jack Brull (aka Glider! We thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about his photography.

TOYCAM take 4! (finally)

the fourth name on the interview list for the toycamera book TOYCAM - Lo-fi Photography. Over the past year the book team collected hundreds of names, viewed many web-pages, Flickr galleries, and toycamera.com galleries. In the end we only had room for 6 interviews in the book, though we would have loved to talked to so many more of you.

So everyone please congratulate Gordon Stettinius (aka Eyecaramba)! We thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about his photography.

TOYCAM is please to announce take 3...

the third name on the interview list for the toycamera book TOYCAM - Lo-fi Photography. Over the past year the book team collected hundreds of names, viewed many web-pages, Flickr galleries, and toycamera.com galleries. In the end we only had room for 6 interviews in the book, though we would have loved to talked to so many more of you.

So everyone please congratulate Marc Wijngaarde (aka Marc Ilford)! We thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about his photography.

TOYCAM is pleased to announce...

the second name on the interview list for the toycamera book TOYCAM - Lo-fi Photography. Over the past year the book team collected hundreds of names, viewed many web-pages, Flickr galleries, and toycamera.com galleries. In the end we only had room for 6 interviews in the book, though we would have loved to talked to so many more of you.

So everyone please congratulate Wallace Billingham (aka Wally)! We thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about his photography.

the TOYCAM Book Team is pleased to announce...

the first name on the interview list for the toycamera book TOYCAM - Lo-fi Photography. Over the past year the book team collected hundreds of names, viewed many web-pages, Flickr galleries, and toycamera.com galleries. In the end we only had room for 6 interviews in the book, though we would have loved to talked to so many more of you.

So everyone please congratulate Jennifer Henriksen (aka HolgaJen)! We thoroughly enjoyed talking to her about her photography.



Check back here next week for the next name!

New Toy Camera Book News!

"The book team is pleased to present you with the dust jacket design for the new toy camera book. First please note the pink and green lines, these are part of the design software and will not be present on the final print. They denote the text area (pink boxes) and the spine (pink vertical lines in the center) and the flap folds (green vertical lines). Our designer and illustrator took their inspiration from 60's/70's vintage magazines such as 'Which?'. The team wanted to really make this book stand out and have a different feel than your typical photography book. So we decided to stay away from highlighting the images on the cover. Trust us when we say the images take front row in the innards, and you will also find some of the illustrations floating around as well. We really love the design and hope you do as well. Feel free to send us your comments and thoughts, you can e-mail me at info@greenstphotography.com or comment on the thread in the forum section of toycamera.com."

To see a larger image click here!

Toy Camera Book!

Back in April of 2009 I made the mistake of suggestion on toycamera.com that it was time to start making a second toy camera book. Then I got the brilliant idea to go ahead and lead that project. Since April a small group of volunteers has worked on outlining the project and pushing it forward. We decided on a format that was a bit broader than the first book created by a small group of toy camera enthusiast’s years before. That first book was very simple in its format, one image per page and a foreword. Our book we decided was going to have a series of themed galleries and a few spot light interviews with selected photographers. To date we have completed "calls for entries" for 5 themes; People/portraits, Scapes, Your Home Town, Still Life, and Motion. We have completed 2 interviews and have 3 more in works. Our last call for entries for the theme Flora/Fauna ends near the end of February (so get your entries in!).

We have a website with details on the current call as well as images of submitted work for the completed themes. Check it out for details about the project and how to submit your work. http://toycamerabook.com/

Our goal is to complete this book by June of this year. It will be published using the online publisher Blurb and will be sold at cost , this was never about making a profit, it is all about putting a book together that highlights some of the excellent photographers using toy cameras today. I hope everyone ends up being happy with the results :)

For those of you that follow this Blog please help us get the word out and put links to this on your blogs and encourage all of your friends to do so as well.