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!

Another Old Polaroid

Here are two images from some night shooting I did last summer. I am trying to get pumped to explore more night shooting this coming summer. The first image was the result of a miss-feed of the Polaroid film that resulted in an unintentional double exposure. I did crop the messy part out and recreated a white frame in photoshop, but hey if you have the tools to rescue a great images (accident or no) then I say go for it. I know there are purists out there who feel different, but its my blog so there!

"Tree Sky"
Polaroid 180
Palaroid Chocolate

"Woodrow Wilson Bridge"
Polaroid 180
Palaroid Chocolate

A last goodbye

As I mentioned in my last post, I have lost both of my pets in the past few months. Living in a small condo I don't have a yard to bury them so I had them cremated so I could spread their ashes. This past Sunday, when the snow finally had melted enough that I could make my way to Tuckers favorite park I finally was able to spread both of boys ashes together. I am not one who is usually very sappy or emotional, the only exception is for my animals. So because I felt I needed to I took along my Holgaroid and shot my last pack of type 80 Polaroid Chocolate film. I'll miss you boys, I hope I did right by you both.

"A last Goodbye"
Holga w/ Polaroid Back
Polaroid Chocolate (type 80)

An Empty House

The past few months have not been very happy for me. Back in November my cat, Max, died suddenly and unexpectedly. There was no apparent cause. He was just 7 years old. I adopted him 6 years ago to be a companion to my aging chocolate lab, Tucker. As it turns out Tucker never seemed to show any interest in Max, but Max over time grew very attached to Tucker. I did catch them occasionally sleeping on the bed next to each other, but always as soon as I saw this Tucker would get up and go sleep some where else.

On February 1st Tucker turned 13, but he was really showing his age. His hind legs had been loosing muscle mass over the past 3 years and his ability to move has been slowly declining for that same time. Until finally this past Sunday he could barley walk and needed help just standing up. Of course this happened during the worst blizzard DC has seen. My sister and her husband were awesome in getting out to me and Tucker in their 4 wheel drive to help me take Tucker one last time to the Vet. I pumped him full of pain meds so that he could walk a bit, and he spent the whole morning outside eating snow. Snow was Tuckers most favorite thing in the whole wide world along with eating, treats, swimming, eating, having his ears scratched, eating, playing frisbee, and eating :)

So for the first time in 13 years when I come home it is to an empty house...

There will be other dogs, and maybe some day another cat, but for now I am going to travel a bit and see my sister in CA and maybe finally make some promised trips to visit old friends.

I'll miss both my boys, but I know they both had a great life and my life was definitely better for having them in it.

"Max"
Nikon FM2N
Afga Scala 200 (B&W slide film)


"Tucker"
Polaroid 180 w. close up lens
Fuji 3000B

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!

Skate or Die 2!

As promised here are some more images of the skaters at city Hall. All in all I was pretty happy to get 6 fairly interesting images out of 18 shots with the Holga. It is a bit difficult to adjust focus on the fly and by feel with this camera. Though I think the slight off focus doesn't hurt these images, and actually I am pretty happy with the focusing I did. I wish I had thought to shoot in the opposite direction straight into the sun as I am thinking I could have made some fun images with some sun flair. Plus putting the sun in the background would give me essentially a blank background which would have been a nice change of pace. That said the flag on city hall in the background just works if you ask me.

All images shot w/ Holga w/4x ND filter
Holgamods Holga with waist level veiwfinder
Ilford HP5

Skate or Die!

This past weekend while walking around town working on my new photo project I ran across some kids skating in the dry fountain in front of city hall. I had only taken 4 rolls of film with me and at this point I only had 18 shots left. So I made a mental note to start taking more film with me (I really should know better). I tend to prefer to take as little equipment as I need because I often find myself carrying around cameras and or film I never use. A few extra rolls of film is always a good idea though. So here are some of my images of the skater kids. These are all double exposures. I'll post the other images later this week.

Holga w/4x ND Filter
Holga Mods Waist Level Viewfinder
Ilford HP5

Holga w/4x ND Filter

Holga Mods Waist Level Viewfinder
Ilford HP5

Holga w/4x ND Filter
Holga Mods Waist Level Viewfinder
Ilford HP5