some of my best friends are dogs Darwin on the deck

My third attempt at faking the effect of shooting with a Holga. Any

advice on improving my efforts would be appreciated. Thanks for any

comments.

I had to do a bit of looking around to find out what a Holga actually was (the photo noob that i am :P). Having done so, i would say, yeah. I think you could pass this of as taken with Holga.

Cheers

Shayne

Hi Shayne the fact that you took the time to look this up tells me you are anything but a " photo noob" There is a certain irony in spending lots of money on camera gear, computers and software to then use it all to try and replicate the effect of using a $20 plastic toy camera. I have always been fascinated by primitive equipment. In years gone by, I shot 4 x 5 sheet film using a home made pinhole camera and got lots of quite nice images from this. if you get a moment there is a guy on this site who has a nice collection of images shot with a real Holga.

: www.photo.net/photos/Robert Brown

His stuff is truly inspirational. I recently read an article on how to convert the body cap for my 20d into a pinhole lens, when I get a chance I'm definitely going to check out doing this. As always Shayne, thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.

"Darwin" -- the rascal looks like a Darwin! You have some great shots of this pooch and he looks like a great dog.

Hi Tim, thanks for the comment. Yeah " rascal " only just begins to describe Darwin. Darwin and his sister Maggie work hard every day to keep the household in a fairly constant state of pandemonium. Gotta love em .

This is really good dog shot. Like the treatment for what you done here. Is this kind of light sepia or what? Vignetting works also, more artistic shot. Thanks for sharing.

I arrived at this tone by sampling another one of my images and making a layer with that colour. I am still new to photo shop and am trying to learn how to use it. This image is my attempt at recreating the effect of shooting with a Holga, a cheap plastic camera. If you look above at my response to Shayne there is a link to a person on photo.net who does this for real with an actual Holga camera.

I checked the link and now i understand what you were after. And it looks just like the same. Good luck for your photo shopping learnings... i try to avoid it as much as i can, i have a patience of an 2 year old when it comes to post process. Tero

Yeah I here you about post processing I'm always having much more fun with the camera in my hand than the mouse. I also tell myself that although much wonderful work gets created in photo shop, it is not ever going to be an integral part of my work, so there's no need to get really good at it. Of course this is most likely just me being lazy. Better to learn it and choose not to use it than have no idea of how to use it well.

lmao ~ OMG!

 

you totally got me on this one. Not only that but I had a BOX of those little bitty camera's that you take to the stores to have developed and I have about seven (yes seven) that camer out and I have ONE that almost looks like this of our dog. ONLY it is not as clear!

 

HA!!

 

This is great! I absolutely love how you did it all the way down to that ring on the edge. Yes that grey/blue/sepia ring. You got this down pat!

 

Wonderful. NOW can you do it to a FACE? hmmm Challenge time!

Thanks Micki, I would be curious to see that photo from your "little bitty" camera. If you ever scan & post it, please let me know. I'm pretty sure I could recreate this with a person but I probably won't. Nothing personal, I just have a life time policy of only rising to challenges I set for myself. I manage to fall far enough behind on those already.

i do belive that of the three fake holgas this one is the nearest to the real thing, keep practiceing and you'll reach perfection...:)

Thanks Bogdan, that is very helpful. Subjective feed back truly does speed along the learning process. The fact that it is not only I who believes this is the closest of three, gives some confirmation that this attempt is a good direction to move forward from. I will keep experimenting and see what I come up with.

I am equally as intrigued by the correspondence your work inspires as the work itself. You are creative and adventuresome with the shutter. Now my dog lover side will just speak to the feelings this evokes. Yes Darwin I would know that eye any where. My favorite part of the shot is the light within the shadows on his left side. It brings a depth to the image. Especially the muted coat around this side of his face. (You know my taste there with soft lines.)I like the improvement with softening the near eye. very effective!

Then theres that nose that wonderful nose! stealing the thunder from the shot. It somehow manages to overwhelm my attention. Obviously your intention? Your subject is a great one for the sepia or (Holga?) processing and I look forward to watching the works evolve. Best regards. ~Mary~

Hi Mary, you are are always very astute. That softness and glow was created in part by a technique I tried for the first time on this shot. I've been reading Scott Kellby in an effort to slay the CS2 dragon. Basically I created a duplicate layer applied a Gaussian blur then reduced the opacity until I liked the result. It gives a soft glow which I though might add to the effect of a cheap plastic lenses aberrations.You are also right about the nose I shot this at 10mm and got in as close as possible to make that snout of his as big as I could.

Hi Gordon.

 

Pet photos are not the sort of thing I usually go out of my way to either take (I leave that to the kids) or look at in too much detail, but this one, and the others in your portfolio are so more than just pet photos. I like the way you have re-created the Holga look here - it's worked really well. And I tell you something....that dog looks human! In the past, I always thought of pet photos as not much more than "snaps" of some little critter either asleep or running around. And the other sort were the ones that some dodgy photographer would take at the local garden centre in front of a small bit of picket fence and charge a lot of money for. Looking at yours, and a lot of the other on this site has really opened my eyes a bit.

 

Out of interest, have you got a Holga? I'm tempted to buy one for fun - seem to be cheap on fleabay.

 

Pete

Trust me Pete, these two are not " some little critters" This breed was created to take down bears and wolves. To witness these guys carrying on when anything or anyone tries to enter the three acre clearing in the bush, where my house sits is something to remember. Yes Darwin probably looks human because he thinks he is human and most days he is also pretty certain that he's leader of the pack! I regularly try to convince him otherwise to no avail. I shoot these two a lot because they are always around, are never camera shy and work for meat rather than money. I agree with your observation about photo.net being an eye opener. I almost never photograph people other than avant garde jazz musicians and gave very little consideration to portraiture. Looking at the work of the many talented portrait photographers here has given me a whole new level of appreciation for this area. I do not own a Holga. After many years away from developing my own film and doing darkroom work I am reticent to get back into that whole chemistry thing again. Living in the woods, I have my own water supply and septic system, so I would be obliged to haul all that toxic stuff to a hazardous waste facility. I also can't imagine letting someone else develop my film. I came across a site for someone selling Holga lenses glued onto body caps for various digital SLRs. Drop me a line if you want the link. I don't know what the policy is around here for linking to commercial sites. I figure I could make one of them pretty easily if I had the lens. Definitely on my list of winter projects. Thanks for stopping by.

Not trying to be funny, but I think it actually might be a bit too sharp and clear for Holga work.

That said, every Holga is different, and lots are modified by the photographers. Some photographers like the inherent light leaks, others do everything they can to seal the leaks. And as you can imagine, with a plastic camera and a plastic lens, any sort of quality control in the camera's manufacture is pretty much non-existent...and therein lies the charm of shooting with Holgas (and Dianas). Much like pinhole cameras, the photographer is never really sure just what he or she is going to get with a Holga. I keep wanting to try one, myself.

Regarding the photograph as a whole, I really like it. For me, the eyes and Darwin's expression make this a really good shot. The post-shoot processing works well for me, too. I like the warm tones.

I did not think you were trying to be funny, you were being honest and that is something I value. I also agree with your assessment. I had tried a couple of tricks in PS2 to soften the edges but in the end I lack what it takes to make a decent quality Canon wide angle lens come off looking like a plastic lens. I got a bit closer with the other fake Holga of Maggie in terms of degrading the image quality but the aspect ratio is of course wrong for a Holga. Although I like the shot for what it is I gave up on trying fake Holgas, at least for now. I have been giving some thought to gluing a cheap plastic lens onto a body cap for my camera and trying that out to get a sort of digital Holga. I read an article on using this approach to make a digital pinhole camera and I have hopes to find the time to try that out also. I did fool around some, with pinhole cameras back in my youth. I liked the unpredictable nature of the process. Actually I just posted one of those old images here last week. I was surprised at how much curiosity the image generated.

 

Darwin is a big ole baby despite his size. When he was nine months old his sister was returned to the breeder because she supposedly had behavior issues. We were ecstatic at the chance to adopt Maggie and reunite the two siblings. Now they are partners in crime and are almost inseparable.

 

Thanks for dropping by Jim I wish you much success with your rescue efforts.

 

Regards Gord