flickr & Holga scans

Been busily doing work. Really enjoying getting to use (read: play about with) the Holga for this brief. 

Have recently learned the art of uploading a URL for an image, yeah, took me awhile to figure that one out.. And I had already decided to use flickr as a platform to show the Holga images, so will use the URL rather than upload twice, now that would just be silly..

I've discovered a plethora of Lomography websites, esp Holga ones. I think its because the camera is so customisable that people help each other out and there's quite a strong community feel. In the booklet with the starter pack they list ten Holga websites, and rather humbly, put theirs tenth. 

I joined the '35mm Sprocket hole' and 'Holga' groups on flickr to upload some images and hopefully garner some comments/criticisms. So I was quite excited when I just checked and saw that four of my images in the 'Holga' group have been added as a favourite (no idea what that actually means..) Two of them have been added as favourites twice, all about 16 hours ago. Interestingly, however, is that the most viewed picture has only been viewed 7 times..! I'll keep checking back and see how it progresses. 

Ok, backtracking, I spent Thursday morning booked in to the digital print room scanning both sets of negatives, medium format and 35mm. I decided to rescan the medium format as it seems to be the most popular choice from the flickr group members in the forum. And I knew the developers wouldn't be able to print the sprocket holes and I would have to scan them. The medium format were easy, as they fit the 120 holders that come with Epson scanners, the 35mm was a little more fiddly. At first I stuck them into the 120 holders with tape and then after conferring with the technician and forum research decided to hold them down using a pane of glass from the ceramics room. This worked pretty well, but has left some circular lines where the negatives weren't pressed down enough. For some of the negatives I adjusted the contrast in the settings before scanning, and some I enhanced in photoshop after. I was really impressed with how some of the medium formats turned out, as from the prints they looked grey and lifeless but transformed into bold, striking images once scanned.

Enough rambling, its the images that matter!

Medium Format, Golden Acre Park:

Geese/Face has been added as a 'favourite'

Tunnel has been added twice

The green version has been added twice and has the highest amount of views

The Geese has been added

These final two are still my personal strongest images, but its interesting to see other people's opinions of your work. I am pleased I decided to scan these in, the difference between them is remarkable. (compare!)

Edit: On viewing the blog the images have been cropped once posted... Will try uploading the next batch set to 'small' rather than 'medium' and see if that makes a difference.