HOLGA (the first post of many)

I have fallen into a recent love affair with a.... HOLGA. For those of you who don't know (aka my non PV readers, if there are any!)....Anyways....A HOLGA is virtually a plastic camera, with no control over what you shoot. Well, no aperture control at least. Or 'technically' there is control, that being you can choose between single person shots, group shots, or far away shots. And as for your ISO, you choose between cloudy and sunny. No aperture control (depth of field) at all, really. The results are pretty funky, and I get pretty excited with the results, some say too excited. But whatever. I find it so much more interesting. You never know what the shot will look like, really, well I mean... you can have a fair idea...sorry I'm rambling. The photos I am displaying below are all shot with the HOLGA, I took her (yes, it's a SHE) out to the Moses Mayes show last Saturday @ The Pyramid. The show was phenomenal, and the HOLGA documented it well. The film I was using was too low of an ISO (100), so the photos turned out a little underexposed, so I did a bit of editing (yay for hybrid photography). Today I purchased 400 ISO, so better luck next time!

;) Bon appetit!

Lisa & I

Rhonda & Lisa

Lisa (channeling Mosshart)

Rhonda & I (Osborne)

Classic washroom shot

This dancer

These dancers

Random nice lady that posed for myself and HOLGA

=)

Friends

&

Fruit shakes

Child Find Manitoba

My friend from PV, Jill, invited me out to a gala that we attended last night. I went because I love getting dressed up, and that the food would be great because it was at The Fort Garry Hotel. I also went because it supported children - that was all I knew, vaguely, but who wouldn't want to support that? So we went, and upon arriving I realized it was for Child Find's 25th Anniversary. We ate delicious appetizers, an amazing dinner, and great dessert. It was just a beautiful night. It was when the speakers came up to talk about their horrific stories of what happened to their own children that it really occurred to me why 300 people were here. Child exploitation is a huge problem that, like many others in our country, we are not exposed to enough. I am not even a mother and when I heard the first speech done by the mother of Candace Dunshire (this was a fairly huge story of a child going missing and never returning home in the 80s), I had tears in my eyes. There was somewhat of a 'victory' story, however, after this one - a father came up and spoke of how he got his son back, and it was amazing. I joked with everyone at the table that my sister had been very stern about not getting any strains (wine, food) on her silk dress that I borrowed. Looking down at the dress, there was one tiny, tiny stain - and it was from a tear that dropped while listening to these brave people tell us their stories. Although the night was heavy at some parts, the lights dimmed down and this huge group of people celebrated the night away. What were we celebrating? The 25 years that Child Find has been in existence to aid families in pain, help them find their child, and most importantly - try and put a stop to this terrible occurrence that goes on on a daily basis across Canada. I have always said that once I am working and have a 'real job' I would put lots of money into The Humane Society, but after last night, I am quite certain that Child Find may be added to that list. It was a great night in so many ways, and Jill, if you are reading this - thanks so much for inviting me!

P.S. - Obviously we got to bust out some dance moves to some classics, including Dancing Queen.

6 kinds of glue, won't hold you

AT 21.1 Hybrid Photography

During spring break Jill & I went out to stay in Kenora from the Monday-Wednesday. Although we were staying in town, we spent a far bit of the time (usually all day) outdoors. I wound up shooting 2 rolls of film, one of which was the Kodak Ektar that you are viewing below!

So on the first day we had gotten to Kenora around 1 p.m., so we wound up just visiting Rushing River and a few miscellaneous places along the highway. The second day, however, we decided to hike around Coney Island. To get to Coney Island you have to walk across this floating bridge from the mainland to the island, which was pretty cool. The image above was taken just a few minutes into our trek. Although the theme of this role as an entirety is of the Kenora trip in general, lots of my images were aiming to depict industrialism and it's affect on nature. This one above is showing the plants with big corporations in the background, the most obvious being Shopper's Drug Mart. There are a few others on the roll with this sort of idea behind them, but most of them are on my B&W roll/digital camera.
Of course, you can't be serious all the time, so some of the shots were just some fun ones of the crew enjoying nature. This is Jill. Our destination of the hike was to reach her families row of cabins, to visit a bear that is currently living under her grandparents! I didn't get a photo of the bear cause I was way too freaked out to even walk, never mind setting up a shot. This was taken of Jill on her dock, when the sun poked out for a little while. Her expression is due to the relief of surviving the black bear (or she is just laughing at how scared I was...)
This was taken along the way, for some reason the image of this dock just caught me. I was chilling out on a big boardwalk, taking a break and sitting down when I looked across the way and saw this. This was one of the first times I have utilized my 70-210 mm lens for my MINOLTA.
Just a nice shot of Chris and Jill on the ice. We met up with Chris during the trip and he came out with us for all the adventures, including visiting the infamous bar and grill, "HAPS" in town. Jill had a blue lagoon, I had a Kokanee, and Chris had a ....Sprite? We were giving him a hard time. Sadly I didn't photograph any of that - it wouldn't have really suited the whole hiking and nature theme.
Decided to leave my mark on a beach on the way home. The beach looked really neat because it was part snow, part sand, part ice, and now, part Laura!

All in all, awesome trip, and lots of fun shooting colour film. This was my very first time shooting colour and I will definitely be doing it more often (along with scanning my negatives, of course).

What New York Used To Be.

Hmph.

self portrait

For some reason I've decided today is the day to begin blogging. I have only been using the blog for school related assignments, but maybe there is some value to blogging seeing as so many people are avid about doing it? So this will be a bit of a throwback to my 'LiveJournal' days in grade 8.

The 10 month program at PV (Prairieview) is wrapping up soon, yowzas. Really has been the fastest past 10 months of my life. I really like PV, and the fact it is ending makes me sad. I don't know whether this is because I am confused as to what to do with myself afterwards, or that I just genuinely love the place. A mix of both probably. I mean, I know I definitely do just like the environment. I was thinking today about how many cool people I have met there, and have decided that even if I wind up never using this diploma, the friendships I have cultivated would make up for that. I do have plans, just need to get the wheels in motion.