CO.CO

CO.CO
Holga 120s
Cross-process Fuji slide film
©Sarah McKinney 2010

Laura Burlton's Dreamy Photos

I was excited to see who won the Holgapalooza Photography Contest this year, and immediately started seeking out the winners' work. The most striking to me was Laura Burlton's Holga photographs of children, mostly photographed in front of fairytale-themed chalk backgrounds. The result is some kind of childhood-fantasy-dreamland with just enough a hint of something-short-of-creepiness. I mean that as a compliment. The photos evoke that unnameable feeling of remembering childhood, where your memories are more like pictures, or fragments of dreams.

All above images ©Laura Burlton

Robb Albrecht's Sloshutter

I love digital cameras. Don't get me wrong. Just because I'm all "Hey guys, here's a site just for us, the few who actually still shoot on film" doesn't mean that I haven't taken a thousand photos at the bar or been sucked into the instant sepia-tone scam. I'm not a segregationist. Digital cameras make it so easy to just shoot and shoot and shoot, because hey, you can always delete it, right? But I worry that when I'm constantly shooting I'm not actually participating in the moment. I'm a spectator.

This is why I love film. There's constantly a little devil on my shoulder saying, "Cha-ching!" with each shot, reminding me it's costly. I should slow down and really look, and (to get all woo-woo on your asses) "be in the moment." Which is exactly what Robb Albrecht is doing with his Holga shots. Robb has a solid portfolio on his website Sloshutter featuring portrait and landscape work, as well as an affinity and knack for toy camera photography:

Roofline
Holga 120N on Fuji Pro 400H
©Robb Albrecht

Rolls of Straw
Holga 120N on Fuji Pro 400H
©Robb Albrecht

Marigold Farm, Los Osos, CA
Holga 120N on Delta 400 B&W
©Robb Albrecht

Fetal Alcohol Awareness
Holga 120N on Delta 400 B&W
©Robb Albrecht

Morrow Bay Power Plant
Holga 120N on Fuji Pro 400H
©Robb Albrecht

White and Blue
Holga 120N on Fuji Pro 400H
©Robb Albrecht

"I am a self taught professional photographer living on the Central Coast of California. A background in film and video production gave me an excellent base of skills which helped me transition into photography. My work has been included in local and national advertising campaigns but my true photographic passion lies in shooting the interesting things I see in my world everyday. Although most of my work is done digitally, the lo-fi aspects of shooting with my Holga is a wonderful departure from the world of 1s and 0s and instant gratification. Shooting with the Holga forces me to slow down and really look before shooting and the results are always eye catching."

~Robb Albrecht

A Polaroid a Day

Speaking of Polaroids, my cousin Melanya pointed me towards a blog post about a man named Jamie Livingston. Jamie took a Polaroid a day for twenty years (!) until his death.

I thought about writing a piece that would draw my own conclusions about how I feel about it, about capturing an instant in your life with an instant medium, about what it would mean to have daily photographic evidence of a large continuous portion of your life through your own death, but I think you should just look at the pictures and draw your own conclusions. Words just don't do it justice.

Kerry Ball's Polaroids

Have you ever been a passenger in a car, kind of bored and sleepy with road hypnosis, when you just happen to look up at the sky right as a hawk flies overhead with a live snake in it's talons?? Yeah. Seeing Kerry Ball's work was kind of like that.

I came across Kerry's work while I was trolling the "blogosphere" (my brain just started to bleed writing that) for interesting toy camera photography. You can see most of her work on her website and in her Etsy store. She has a ton of great photos shot on her Diana Mini and Lomo Fish Eye, and even some cool TtV (Through the Viewfinder) shots, but I was really stunned by her Polaroids and am looking forward to seeing her collection grow.

Dead Blue Jay
Polaroid SLR 680 on Polaroid 600 film
©Kerry Ball

Bowling Shoes
Polaroid SLR 680 on Polaroid 600 film
©Kerry Ball

Red String of Destiny
Polaroid SLR 680 on Polaroid 600 film
©Kerry Ball

TATTOOS
Polaroid SLR 680 on Polaroid 600 film
©Kerry Ball

Laqueefa Bitch
Polaroid SLR 680 on Polaroid 600 film
©Kerry Ball

"Kerry Ball is a freelance photographer, born and raised in South Florida. Living with her boyfriend and their two cats, on the same block that she grew up on, she spends her time collecting antique skeleton keys, seashells, anything with the number 5, and tattoos. She has a penchant for vintage Polaroid cameras and shooting with toy cameras (Diana Mini and Lomo Fish Eye). Her obsession with photography started around the age of 9, when she received her first camera, a Fisher Price model that used 110 film. From then, it continued with her first Pentax 35mm SLR and then eventually to digital cameras- most recently a Nikon D40x. She can often be found driving the streets of Miami in search of new graffiti murals, urban landscapes, or coastal scenery to shoot; Miami influences her both as a person and as an artist and always will be her home. When not taking pictures, she also enjoys expressing herself through the creation of unique, emotional, and expressive mixed media collages."

Jeff Soderquist, our first toyeur (well, besides me.)

Let's give a warm Toyeur welcome to our very first toyeur, Jeff Soderquist! Jeff had a pretty great collection of Holga shots just laying around in his Flickr account and was kind enough to share them with us all. It's enough to make you want to go out and grab a case of Portra, right?

Pink Tulip Field
Holga 120 with Kodak Portra 400 film
©Jeff Soderquist

Grass Blades (Original artwork by John Fleming)
Holga 120 with Kodak 400 Tmax film
©Jeff Soderquist

2010 Darrington Kickball Classic - 1
Holga 120 with Kodak Portra 400 film
©Jeff Soderquist

"Learn as I go photographer living in Seattle. I have been dabbling with photography for about a year and a half. Landscape and street photography are my primary focus, but am becoming increasingly interested in photographing food. I love the Holga120 for its simplistic unpredictability. It forces me to rethink the way I photograph the world, getting closer to my subject matter, becoming obsessed with available light (cause the Holga needs a lot of it), hoping my next click of the shutter will be that one magical photograph I’ve been dreaming of."

-Jeff Soderquist

RayKo call for submissions

RayKo is holding a call for submissions, solely for Kodachrome film. Check it out, and let me know if any of you enter!