Nostalgia

I have expanded my photography interests as of late. I recently got a Holga 120N for Christmas from my wife. The Holga is essentially a toy camera. It was designed as a cheap camera for anyone to be able to purchase and use. Then film changed and everyone switched to 35mm instead of 120mm. The Holga has only a few basic settings: Aperture (which doesn't actually work), Focus (four basic settings), and Bulb (quick shutter speed or long shutter). There is a hotshoe for a flash, but I don't have one so I don't use that. The back sometimes falls off so I hear so I've put a rubberband around it so it will stay on. There's also a lot of customizations you can do for it which are referred to as hacks. I'll let you know if I try any of them. So the Holga is basic and I am pretty excited about this. It's sort of like going back to my high school days of shooting photos. Back when you were on a leash in regards to how many shots you could take in a day. Back before digital took over. Not that I'm against digital. I have a Nikon D40 and I love it. But there's something about using film, especially 120 film and only having 12 shots per roll. I'm planning on getting some developing equipment and really take it back to high school photo days. The photo included here is literally the first picture I took with the Holga. Overall I feel it turned out ok. I like the results you get with film. I scanned this on my home printer/copier/scanner, so quality is less than ideal. Hopefully I can continue to afford the film and developing and get some more prints on here.

A Passing

I got the news the other night that my grandfather, Stanley Hudson Westlund had passed away. While most people would see this as horrible news, I am quite happy about it. Before you break out the mat and "jump to conclusions" (see it's a mat and you can 'jump' to conclusions-sorry, Office Space reference) know that I had a wonderful relationship with my grandfather. He was pretty much the awesomest guy ever. On a scale of 1 to godly, I think that only Jesus beat him. When it came to loving someone regardless of who they were or what they had done he was also awesome at it. So now he gets to go home. He gets to meet his Savior face to face. In fact, a few times this last year he had to be revived and was quite upset about it. He was ready to head home. So now we'll head down to California and celebrate with hundreds of other people. We'll celebrate that Grandpa Stan is home. We'll celebrate the countless lives he affected. We'll celebrate the life he lived and think about how we all want to be as awesome as he was.