When it comes to these Holgaramas, form is probably my most important consideration. It is the desire to break out of the standard four sided rectangle that encourages me to make multiple frames in a mishmash like this. So whenever I set up to do one of these, before I even make the first frame the question I am asking and answering is what shape am I going to aim for? And of course, that question is at least partially answered by figuring out what my concept/subject is going to be, because the shape of the frame should be formed deliberately to support the content of the image, otherwise making odd shaped stitches ventures into the realm of gimmickry. That is when you are making weird shape stitches just for the sake of making weird shaped stitches.

I mention all this because part of me wishes I had exposed one more frame that included more of the falls itself, but adding that extra frame to the top middle would have changed the shape of the whole stitch into more of a blob instead of a rough pano and my subject here was the ice-encrusted bowl at the base of the falls, not the falls itself, per se. That and the otherworldly appearance these falls take on in the ice. So I was aiming for content of both the concrete and abstract nature - ice encrusted bowl and otherworldly feeling/appearance.

As photographers we have lots of tools at our disposal: shutter, aperture, ISO, white balance, focal length, exposure, saturation, sharpness, hue, contrast, cloning, layering, etc. One of the best lessons that I try to impart to beginning photographers is to become aware of just how many variables you can conceivably control yourself. With our super-advanced equipment sometimes it becomes easy to just go auto too much and take a lot of these tools for granted. Well these holgaramas are a reminder then that frame shape is another tool at our disposal and one many photographers take for granted and forget that not everything has to be rectangular or square. Think about it, how many times over the last 100, 500, even 1000 frames you have made have you stopped and asked yourself, "is rectangular/square really the best shape for what I am trying to photograph?" Probably not too many times. We just do it with little regard or conscious decision. Instead of fitting our frames to our subjects, we fit our subjects to our frames. In a sense, this is a bit backwards.

Something to keep in mind and chew on with the photographic part of your brain.

So, the next time you get out try setting up some multiple-photo stitches, particular composites where the pieces are not all going to line up evenly. Break out of that rectangular cage. Just remember to start with subject matter first. Figure that out and the shape tends to follow naturally.

Tags:   Holga 120FN Holgarama winter frozen icy Multnomah Falls Columbia River Gorge cold Oregon landscape stitch pano Pacific Northwest brrrr Kodak Ektar 100 at least with these images I can always remember which film I used

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I have lived in Oregon for my entire adult life and never have I visited our only national park, so this was my first trip in celebration of my first Father's day. A while back on a trip to Yosemite I saw a photo by Ted Orland in the Ansel Adams gallery of a sunrise at Mono Lake that just blew my mind. Using his holga camera he had shot 8 frames of the sunrise and stitched them together in photoshop into a magnificent panoramic. A friend of mine, David Reamer (who has a picture or two in my Once in a Blue Moon group) once mentioned that for him there are three types of photos: the ones he took, the ones he wished he had taken, and the ones that just aren't very good. Ted Orland's shot fell very firmly into that second category.

About a month later I found out I had taken second place in a local camera shop's holga photography contest. Part of the prize was a new holga and a book on holga photography. Included in the book was a brief biography of none other than Ted Orland. So with his photography burning fresh in my mind I left my old holga at home and took my new holga to Crater Lake with just this project in mind. I thought about taking my old holga, which has been with me for years and is lovingly decorated with the album cover from Achtung Baby, but it has a very nasty tendency to flare heavily and I didn't want to end up with a few really good shots ruined by heavy flare on a couple of others, mostly likely the ones that would go smack in the middle of the panoramic.

Coming into Crater Lake from the north we stopped at this overlook immediately. It was the very first spot we could pull over and this was one of my first views of this lake which I have long wanted to see. I quickly loaded a roll of slide into my Holga with the intent to cross process seeing how blue the water was and knowing it would just be enhanced by the cross processed Kodak slide film. Click click click, it may have been the fastest I have ever gone through a roll of holga.

During the three days there I made two other panoramic series of the lake with my Holga. One was foiled by the bulb switch somehow activating itself, though I swear I made sure it was still on "N". The second was taken during the first of two sunrises we photographed, an amazing and absolutely mind-blowing sunrise, with a solid bank of clouds rolling over the western edge of the caldera and spilling across the lake while the sun rose to the east and tinged everything a golden yellow. That panoramic is still in the works and hopefully I can make something presentable of it. Until then, this is my first foray into this time of panoramic holga photography. So thanks to Ted Orland whose photography inspired this. Thanks too to Kodak who seems to make slide film that is better for cross processing than processing, sorry I guess a bit of bitterness still about the discontinuation of the UC films in 120. ;-) It is certainly not perfect and still a bit of a work in progress, but then again what photography isn't?

Tags:   holga panoramic Ted Orland cross process Crater Lake Oregon Pacific Northwest National Parks alternative overlapping lakes blue 120 AnAwesomeShot Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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"... I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough care, if I am very very lucky, I will make ... a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will answer." --The Princess Bride


I consider myself a photographer...stop. Not a fine art photographer, nor a master, or a photographic genius. Not a savant or a guru. I guess if you pressed me I might label myself as a landscape photographer, but only hesitantly as I am reluctant to confine the definition of my photography so. Simply put, I make pictures, therefore I am a photographer.

The words art and artist are tricky titles to apply, there is a lot of gray area. I try not to think too long about what is art and what is not, it really is not usually that relevant to what I do. I shall say though that I believe art is not something one does haphazardly or on occasion. Just because you smear paint on a canvas, does not necessarily make you an artist, nor does one's ability to press a shutter button.

The mild rant aside, recognition as an artist, is not what drives me. I do not actually dream of being an artist. What I do dream of is being a teacher, or at least someone who facilitates the spread of ideas and knowledge, specifically relating to photography. There is little that is more rewarding than sharing an image like this and seeing it excite (rather than impress) others. Knowing they will go out and incorporate those ideas into their own personal vision of the world, which will have just become that much wider because of the new inclusion of perspectives. Then knowing they in turn will share those visions and ideas back again with the rest of us. That to me is a much richer reward than any list of accolades.

To speak a bit of the technique used to create this image, I first saw this idea demonstrated by the photographer Ted Orland. I was visiting Yosemite and happened to stop in at the Ansel Adams Gallery where Ted had an amazing photo of Mono Lake done in this style. His photo was a lightning bolt to my imagination and not too long after seeing his image, I found myself standing along this stretch of the Oregon coast hoping for a nice sunset. It was an amazing afternoon, and I spent it up on the cliffs reading The Princess Bride and taking photos, but I was certain the sunset was going to fizzle because of the layers of clouds on the horizon. Sure enough the sun sank behind the thick band of clouds and the sky started to gray out so I hiked down off of the cliffs and figured I would linger on the beach...just in case. The sun reached the horizon and the burst through the thin layer of clouds there, lighting up everything for about 10 minutes. I double-timed it far enough down the beach so the sun was not behind the cliffs and close enough to Haystack Rock to photograph. Before I left I shot this panoramic with almost an entire roll of film through my Holga. The final photo ended up being the product of eleven separate shots scanned and layered together in Photoshop. It is an interesting technique, and an excellent way to burn film. But it is fun, and it has allowed me to find yet another way to see and capture some of the amazing things I see in life.

Tags:   Holga panoramic Oregon Pacific Ocean Pacific Northwest Cape Kiwanda Pacific City coast beach sunset Haystack Rock toy cameras plastic cameras multiple exposures seascape Zeb Andrews Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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The St. Johns Bridge turned 80 on Monday, June 13th, 2011. Of course, I spent that evening under it, not really with the intention of photographing it, but just to be there. Of course, as these things tend to happen, I did photograph the bridge, and this was the image I made. I have been meaning to make this Holgarama of the bridge for over a year, and just had never really gotten around to it. A couple years ago I was giving a lecture on pinhole photography at PCC. After the lecture, one of the students caught up with me and told me how much he liked these Holgaramas I did. A few days later I got an e-mail from him at work with an attached image of his own, it was of the St Johns Bridge, done from this angle. I thought it brilliant and it got added to our folder of rotating background images at work, so every few days it came up again and reminded me. So the credit for this idea is all his (I need to track down that e-mail to remember his name). I added my own touches, such as doing it with a Holga, at dusk and including myself in the frame. I like the final result well enough, but think I will someday try this one again, maybe on the bridge's 90th birthday. ;-)

This composite is the result of 11 individual images, by the way. Three for each of the piers. One anchor image between the piers, a capstone image at the top center, and then three variously tilted images running up the span between the anchor and capstone.

Notes to self. Go back on a clear night for better, richer blue hour. Also, include multiple selves. And taller, make the bridge taller. Maybe get a bit closer, and use one additional image per pier to better capture the bridge's height from this perspective.

Tags:   holgarama St. Johns bridge night urban twilight bridge Portland PDX Holga 120FN film Fuji Pro 800Z self-portrait Pacific Northwest Oregon Cathedral Park looking up Zeb Andrews photography Blue Moon Camera

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