Good Lord, that was an exhausting vacation. What with the dinners and the parties and CHRISTMAS! and New York during the Blizzard of the Century and ice skating and skiing and snowboarding I can’t wait to go back to work for some peace and quiet.
On a day when both children were unexpectedly at home (you’re open during the blizzard, Day Care, but not on New Year’s Eve?), I decided to take them on a little photo safari. I gave each of them a loaded Holga (wonderful thing about a plastic camera; your child can drop it in a snowbank with impunity), and we went out to the mall to see what we could shoot. I showed the boys how to advance the film, set the depth of field, and trip the shutter. (There are only two aperture settings on a Holga - “sunny day” and “cloudy day” - so they’re hardly worth changing.) I tried to give some pointers on composition, but they were having so much fun I didn’t want to restrict them too much. The kids were very excited, and it was all I could do to stop them from shooting a whole roll in the first five minutes.
When we got home, I showed them how to load the rolls into the developing tank, an admittedly unexciting demonstration given that it all takes place inside the changing bag. Then I asked them to suit up to help me develop them. Here’s Minor all suited up in his paint smock and rubber gloves:
After I had developed three rolls - two from Aitch, one from Minor - I realized that Minor hadn’t really gotten the hang of advancing the film. His style tended heavily toward the impressionistic, the result of multiple exposures:
Aitch’s style was more documentary. Here’s the coffee shop. It has a nice industrial feel:
Here’s a street scene. Aitch’s height gives him a good perspective here:
I encouraged him to try to fill the frame with an image, and he produced this shot of the courthouse:
And we got the ghost bus! Ghostly, no?
Finally, here’s a portrait of me trying to discern the number of exposures left in the film in my camera. This is one of my favorite pictures of myself, and it’s not just because my face is obscured. I think he really got something of me here.
