I have never used a Holga or any other plastic camera before, so I’m a little nervous. This reading gave a good overview of what to expect as far as operating the Holga and some of the unpredictable distortions we may experience. I am excited to try it out and see what kind of images I can get. I liked the diagram outlining the parts of a Holga, because some parts of it are fairly different from my 35mm. I am also interested in learning how to do double exposures and hopefully finding out how to avoid doing them by accident. Another note to anyone reading this, my last blog post had a link to a Holga/plastic camera article that I thought was pretty interesting and helpful.

Sometimes I am just blown away by other artists and their amazing ideas that I would never have thought of such as Paul Ramirez-Jonas’s work with a toy train moving back and forth on a track, or Cai Guo-Qiang’s fireworks and smoke effects. It is amazing how lighting can completely change the mood or effect of an image. I am also surprised how much lighting can convey time, either time of day or time period. I agree with the modernist photographers, than anything can be beautiful if well-composed and and executed. Beautiful subject matter isn’t necessary for a beautiful photograph. Shadows can also be interesting subjects. I hadn’t thought about the silhouettes used by Apple as coming from a lighting technique in photography! Learning blows my mind.

I usually think of photography as a fairly modern invention, but it was interesting to go back to the basics of light and shadow that have been around for centuries. Techniques have certainly changed. I like the idea of cinematographers learning to “glamorize starlets by practicing their craft on oranges” (139).  I have done some basic lighting practice before, but it was interesting learning how projectors work to get the right ratio for an image when the light is coming from an angle. It makes so much sense, I can’t believe I had never thought about it before! I’m interested in experimenting with the color temperature of light. It would be interesting to see how that could really change a scene. I also love how this book shows inexpensive ways to get the same effects as professional equipment. Using pantyhose as a way to diffuse light from a flash is brilliant! I’m definitely going to try that one. I also like the idea of using several different light filters in the same image. The example in the book by Sarah Buckius is great.