The Art of Holga-Style Photography: A Community-Driven Approach

The art of photography is a diverse and ever-evolving field, with countless ways to communicate visually. One approach that has gained popularity in recent years is the use of Holga-style cameras, which are known for their unique, plasticky lens effect. In this article, we'll explore the world of Holga-style photography, highlighting some exceptional examples from a community-driven project.

The Holga: A Camera with Character

When it comes to capturing images using a Holga or similar toy camera, one of the most distinctive features is its "plasticky" lens effect. This characteristic can be attributed to the camera's limitations in terms of resolution and sharpness. However, this same effect can also become a creative asset, allowing photographers to achieve unique, moody atmospheres that are often difficult to replicate with more conventional cameras.

One example of a photographer who has mastered the Holga-style aesthetic is Tyler Barfi. His work features a distinctive misty atmosphere, with roads and scenery that appear somewhat wet and indistinct. The sharpness and resolution of his images are reminiscent of the plastic look associated with toy cameras, adding to their unique charm. Barfi's approach to photography is characterized by its moody, atmospheric quality, which is both captivating and thought-provoking.

A Community-Driven Approach

One of the most exciting aspects of this project is the diversity of work being submitted from a wide range of photographers. While some images may be more conventional in their composition and lighting, others take a more experimental approach, pushing the boundaries of what's possible with this type of camera. Take Aaron Overstreet's still life image, for example, which features beautifully lit objects against a simple background. The result is a visually stunning image that showcases the photographer's skill with the Holga-style aesthetic.

Another standout example is Damon Johnson's image of pigeons, which features a deliberate blur effect that adds to its dreamlike quality. This type of experimentation can be both fascinating and challenging for photographers, as it requires them to think creatively about their subject matter and composition. By embracing these limitations, photographers can discover new ways of expressing themselves visually.

Tom Bikezilla: A Theatrical Approach

Tom's submission, which features theater masks in a still life setup, is another excellent example of the diversity of work being submitted for this project. Tom's use of bold colors and striking imagery creates a dynamic, theatrical atmosphere that draws the viewer in. While some might see this as a more conventional approach to photography, it's precisely this kind of creativity that makes the Holga-style aesthetic so compelling.

Raphael D Swift: Challenging Lighting Conditions

In contrast, Raphael D Swift's image presents a challenging lighting situation, with extreme highlights from the snow in the background and shadows created by a nearby tent structure. The resulting effect is both dramatic and captivating, showcasing the photographer's skill at working within these limitations. By adapting to the conditions, Swift has managed to create an image that is not only visually striking but also thought-provoking.

The Importance of Community Engagement

One of the key aspects of this project is its emphasis on community engagement. The organizers encourage photographers to share their work and participate in a collective conversation about the possibilities of Holga-style photography. By doing so, they create an environment that fosters creativity, experimentation, and learning.

In fact, one of the most significant benefits of this project is the opportunity for photographers to learn from each other's work. By sharing images and receiving feedback from peers, participants can gain new insights into their own creative processes and develop their skills further. This collaborative approach also allows for a diverse range of perspectives to be represented, making the collective output even more rich and varied.

Conclusion

The Holga-style aesthetic is just one aspect of the broader world of photography, where creativity knows no bounds. By embracing this unique camera style and exploring its possibilities, photographers can push their boundaries, experiment with new techniques, and develop a distinctive visual voice. As we look forward to the next photo assignment, it's clear that this community-driven project will continue to inspire and challenge us all in equal measure.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat is up everybody welcome back in this video I want to find out where you guys are on our current photo assignment that's going on which is photo summit number 15 before I get rolling into this I do want to make mention of something I talked about a few weeks ago I am now doing a podcast with my friend Sharon Schneider who's an awesome guy he's a writer over at image resource and we've met at several events this year and decided to give this show go I mentioned it it's finally up it takes a while to get in things into iTunes because you have to submit them and then they have to be approved but it's finally up there now the link is really weird and long so I will put that in the show description you guys can check it out we will also be available on stitcher and Spotify coming up soon we're waiting on approval in those as well but I'm really excited about this because Jaron and I we decided to start this podcast it's gonna be a weekly thing that we do it's an hour long and it will dovetail in with this show some what we're calling it art of photography off camera and so it'll give us a forum to discuss things more in depth than what I do in these videos which are typically and that 5 to 10 minute range and so that gives us a longer format to discuss things and our show this week is actually really interesting we decided to talk about photo sharing and the fact that it used to be that you had Flickr and 500px and all of these outlets for exploring this whole idea photo sharing those things have kind of not been cool lately and what we're left with is Instagram and how that's a little bit one-dimensional at times anyway it's an interesting discussion and we would like you guys to get involved and we're gonna open it up to questions that we can answer as a segment in the show as well so go check it out I'm really proud of this it's gonna be a lot of fun and it'll dovetail with this show in the coming weeks and months as we move forward so super excited now let's talk photo assignments the current photo assignment is number 15 which deals with this thing we're calling Holga style and essentially what I did was I gave you guys a ton of restrictions you can shoot whatever you want but it's got to be at f/8 one sixtieth of a second and then I gave you some choices in your ISO settings and there's several ideas behind this and the first one is to get you guys to understand exposure and how your cameras working and light and what you need at those restrictions and that's the whole idea with shooting on a hoga is that it only works in certain lighting conditions because you are limited with your aperture and shutter speed now you can figure out things beyond that I think I left is open but you know if you need to use a higher speed film or something like that if you're using a hoga or with digital it's just selecting a new McCain setting that's a possibility or you know you could use nd filters so there's ways to get around things but one is to understand exposure to each you guys to think about that and then I think to more importantly is more of the creative side of things and I mentioned this whole idea of giving ourselves permission to fail which i think is extremely important and speaking personally from my own creative development and things that I've done over the years that's a really hard thing for me to do I think it's a little hard thing for a lot of people to do because there's something about failure we don't want to fail we want to succeed we want to do great work we want to strive for something awesome and there's nothing wrong with that but if you're not failing then you're not making any mistakes to learn from so that's a big deal it's giving yourself permission to just get out there and do weird stuff or stuff you're not used to doing or shoot-from-the-hip or or you know give yourself permission to fail because then when you review your images and you look at your work you're gonna learn things from it both positive and negative I'm anything on the negative side is obvious it's like oh that's terrible I don't want to do that again but on the positive side sometimes there's a happy accident involved and in both situations whether it's a positive or negative you want to find a way to say how do I not replicate that again or keep from doing it if it's negative and on the positive side you want to say oh how do i how do i reproduce this how do I let this influence the direction that I'm going in so I went online this morning and because we share these using the hashtag I pulled a couple examples and I'm really impressed with the quality of work that's coming in apologies in advance I hope I pronounced people's names right but I want to share these with you because I think that they're really upstanding and there's some really neat things that are going on here so I want to start with this image which i think is fantastic and this is from Ian Timberlake and obviously there's an element of surprise here there's something unexpected or unusual you've got an airplane flying over these towers there's a little bit of motion blur in the plane possibly this is one sixtieth of a second or it was really hauling but either way it's an interesting image and there's something fun going on with the composition it was thought about you have that element of surprise long time ago I talked about Joe Kearney Lartigue who has long deceased but he always had that element his work early on in the in the early days I mean actually through his entire career and I really like that the whole idea of the snapshot are capturing something in action and I think that's really really well done the second image that I want to show you and this is from Aaron J Harrow I believe is how I say this Aaron did an incredible image here and this is very off-the-cuff very improvised and very from the hip but let me explain what works in this image and what I really like about it so for me photography the interest in good photography for me lies in contrasts and so that's not necessarily just contrast in light that can be contrast in subject that can be contrast in focus that can be contrast in motion that's a number of different things and I think that's what you're seeing here there's two contrasts your subject I think is the guys on the motorcycle they're speeding by right but they are obstructed by these figures in the foreground and now I don't think of them as the subject because that's the second thing I see when I look at this image because one they're darker in contrast the more muted colors that possibly this is an accident possibly was improvised I don't know how Aaron's shot this but I really like it one we have a lot of motion going on we have the elements of surprise and we have something very unusual and this is a technique and a way of shooting or envisioning a composition that you could learn from and you could try to reproduce in your work again and that's what we're going for on this and this is a really successful example another one that I like and Mick on the lake is participated in a lot of these photo assignments but and I figured we'd see a lot of this I love this this this whole idea of abstraction I did a video with my friend Matt Beatty when I was in Flagstaff Arizona and he had this method where we took an old olympus digital camera and we put saran wrap over the lens to obscure what was going on with light and so certainly that opens up possibilities for further abstraction for things that you could shoot through and I like this it's almost like an impressionist painting with just these globs of color that are that are blotted on to the the canvas so to speak but it's not it's a photograph so as your screen but anyway really nicely done I think it's a very different take than the other work that we've seen another one that I really like and it's it's more conventional but it's just a really nice atmosphere and a mood that's set up this is Tylar barfi there's a really cool atmosphere going on in this it's very moody you've got the mist you've got the road which appears to be somewhat wet and I like the fact that not a lot of things in here or in focus and I am going to guess that this might have been shot on a Holger or a toy camera because the sharpness and the resolution have that kind of plastic look to it which I really like and another reason that I've always loved the Holga and even Diana cameras for that matter and we're really nicely done and another thing that I wanted to talk about is the range of work that people are submitting for this and here's a really simple still life that's just really beautiful and this is Aaron Overstreet and this is just really nice it's well lit it's nicely done I don't think it's you know crazy daring image it's definitely playing it safe but again it's understanding light and what you can do with this whole idea of Holga style and the restrictions that you have on your camera anyway really nicely done and you're gonna see in here that sometimes when you go through these images and if you go search a hashtag on Twitter Instagram sometimes images come out sharp and they look good and you can certainly plan on that if you understand distance and how your lens works even if you're not using the viewfinder and you can understand how light works and you see some things that are sharp this picture the pigeons is really nicely done and then sometimes it's just a little bit off and I think this one from from Damon Johnson is really nice too it has a weird blur to it again it has a plasticky lens kind of feel but don't worry about being in focus we're not striving perfection on these we're striving for something that's interesting that we can learn from and we might surprise ourselves with and I think that's a really good example of that another image that I want to show you this is from Tom who goes by bike Zilla and I've known Tom for a long time we've been online buddies and he did another still-life thing with these theater masks and I think it's again really nicely done and so it's again it's really cool to see the range of work that people are submitting sometimes it's really adventurous it's really daring it's really abstract and then sometimes it's more conventional but again I guess this is the the awesome thing about photography is we have all these different ways that we can communicate and see things and there's such a range to just the idea of communicating something visually that I think works so well one last one I want to share with you guys this is from Raphael D Swift who I know on Twitter and this is another one that caught my eye the other day when he submitted it and I think it's really interesting because this is actually somewhat of a challenging lighting condition to be in and I don't know if Raphael if he if he set it up to be that way or if he was adapting to it but either way when you limit yourself to one type of camera setting you have extreme highlights in this picture from the snow in the back and then you have the shadows from being under this tent structure with the pile of wood to the right we're really nicely done and I think not only can we learn from our own work on these but we can also learn from what other people are submitting as well and that's the whole idea and why I want you guys to be social with your submissions people still ask me can I just email you my work and the answer's no I want you to share your work I want you to be part of the community and I want you to I mean certainly would be easier on me but you know I'm not looking for easy on me I'm looking for something that we can all learn from and so I think this is the most advantageous way to do that so anyway I wanna thank everybody for who is submitted works so far I will do one of those videos where I've said everybody to music and we put a whole bunch of these in so make sure that you submit your work this week and so today is December 3rd I believe 2018 yeah December 3rd so by the end of the week have your images in like by Friday or something I'm actually going out of town this weekend so when I get back I'll put that video together and in the next couple days I will have your next photo assignment and so anyway if you got any questions drop them below until the next video I will see you guys then laterwhat is up everybody welcome back in this video I want to find out where you guys are on our current photo assignment that's going on which is photo summit number 15 before I get rolling into this I do want to make mention of something I talked about a few weeks ago I am now doing a podcast with my friend Sharon Schneider who's an awesome guy he's a writer over at image resource and we've met at several events this year and decided to give this show go I mentioned it it's finally up it takes a while to get in things into iTunes because you have to submit them and then they have to be approved but it's finally up there now the link is really weird and long so I will put that in the show description you guys can check it out we will also be available on stitcher and Spotify coming up soon we're waiting on approval in those as well but I'm really excited about this because Jaron and I we decided to start this podcast it's gonna be a weekly thing that we do it's an hour long and it will dovetail in with this show some what we're calling it art of photography off camera and so it'll give us a forum to discuss things more in depth than what I do in these videos which are typically and that 5 to 10 minute range and so that gives us a longer format to discuss things and our show this week is actually really interesting we decided to talk about photo sharing and the fact that it used to be that you had Flickr and 500px and all of these outlets for exploring this whole idea photo sharing those things have kind of not been cool lately and what we're left with is Instagram and how that's a little bit one-dimensional at times anyway it's an interesting discussion and we would like you guys to get involved and we're gonna open it up to questions that we can answer as a segment in the show as well so go check it out I'm really proud of this it's gonna be a lot of fun and it'll dovetail with this show in the coming weeks and months as we move forward so super excited now let's talk photo assignments the current photo assignment is number 15 which deals with this thing we're calling Holga style and essentially what I did was I gave you guys a ton of restrictions you can shoot whatever you want but it's got to be at f/8 one sixtieth of a second and then I gave you some choices in your ISO settings and there's several ideas behind this and the first one is to get you guys to understand exposure and how your cameras working and light and what you need at those restrictions and that's the whole idea with shooting on a hoga is that it only works in certain lighting conditions because you are limited with your aperture and shutter speed now you can figure out things beyond that I think I left is open but you know if you need to use a higher speed film or something like that if you're using a hoga or with digital it's just selecting a new McCain setting that's a possibility or you know you could use nd filters so there's ways to get around things but one is to understand exposure to each you guys to think about that and then I think to more importantly is more of the creative side of things and I mentioned this whole idea of giving ourselves permission to fail which i think is extremely important and speaking personally from my own creative development and things that I've done over the years that's a really hard thing for me to do I think it's a little hard thing for a lot of people to do because there's something about failure we don't want to fail we want to succeed we want to do great work we want to strive for something awesome and there's nothing wrong with that but if you're not failing then you're not making any mistakes to learn from so that's a big deal it's giving yourself permission to just get out there and do weird stuff or stuff you're not used to doing or shoot-from-the-hip or or you know give yourself permission to fail because then when you review your images and you look at your work you're gonna learn things from it both positive and negative I'm anything on the negative side is obvious it's like oh that's terrible I don't want to do that again but on the positive side sometimes there's a happy accident involved and in both situations whether it's a positive or negative you want to find a way to say how do I not replicate that again or keep from doing it if it's negative and on the positive side you want to say oh how do i how do i reproduce this how do I let this influence the direction that I'm going in so I went online this morning and because we share these using the hashtag I pulled a couple examples and I'm really impressed with the quality of work that's coming in apologies in advance I hope I pronounced people's names right but I want to share these with you because I think that they're really upstanding and there's some really neat things that are going on here so I want to start with this image which i think is fantastic and this is from Ian Timberlake and obviously there's an element of surprise here there's something unexpected or unusual you've got an airplane flying over these towers there's a little bit of motion blur in the plane possibly this is one sixtieth of a second or it was really hauling but either way it's an interesting image and there's something fun going on with the composition it was thought about you have that element of surprise long time ago I talked about Joe Kearney Lartigue who has long deceased but he always had that element his work early on in the in the early days I mean actually through his entire career and I really like that the whole idea of the snapshot are capturing something in action and I think that's really really well done the second image that I want to show you and this is from Aaron J Harrow I believe is how I say this Aaron did an incredible image here and this is very off-the-cuff very improvised and very from the hip but let me explain what works in this image and what I really like about it so for me photography the interest in good photography for me lies in contrasts and so that's not necessarily just contrast in light that can be contrast in subject that can be contrast in focus that can be contrast in motion that's a number of different things and I think that's what you're seeing here there's two contrasts your subject I think is the guys on the motorcycle they're speeding by right but they are obstructed by these figures in the foreground and now I don't think of them as the subject because that's the second thing I see when I look at this image because one they're darker in contrast the more muted colors that possibly this is an accident possibly was improvised I don't know how Aaron's shot this but I really like it one we have a lot of motion going on we have the elements of surprise and we have something very unusual and this is a technique and a way of shooting or envisioning a composition that you could learn from and you could try to reproduce in your work again and that's what we're going for on this and this is a really successful example another one that I like and Mick on the lake is participated in a lot of these photo assignments but and I figured we'd see a lot of this I love this this this whole idea of abstraction I did a video with my friend Matt Beatty when I was in Flagstaff Arizona and he had this method where we took an old olympus digital camera and we put saran wrap over the lens to obscure what was going on with light and so certainly that opens up possibilities for further abstraction for things that you could shoot through and I like this it's almost like an impressionist painting with just these globs of color that are that are blotted on to the the canvas so to speak but it's not it's a photograph so as your screen but anyway really nicely done I think it's a very different take than the other work that we've seen another one that I really like and it's it's more conventional but it's just a really nice atmosphere and a mood that's set up this is Tylar barfi there's a really cool atmosphere going on in this it's very moody you've got the mist you've got the road which appears to be somewhat wet and I like the fact that not a lot of things in here or in focus and I am going to guess that this might have been shot on a Holger or a toy camera because the sharpness and the resolution have that kind of plastic look to it which I really like and another reason that I've always loved the Holga and even Diana cameras for that matter and we're really nicely done and another thing that I wanted to talk about is the range of work that people are submitting for this and here's a really simple still life that's just really beautiful and this is Aaron Overstreet and this is just really nice it's well lit it's nicely done I don't think it's you know crazy daring image it's definitely playing it safe but again it's understanding light and what you can do with this whole idea of Holga style and the restrictions that you have on your camera anyway really nicely done and you're gonna see in here that sometimes when you go through these images and if you go search a hashtag on Twitter Instagram sometimes images come out sharp and they look good and you can certainly plan on that if you understand distance and how your lens works even if you're not using the viewfinder and you can understand how light works and you see some things that are sharp this picture the pigeons is really nicely done and then sometimes it's just a little bit off and I think this one from from Damon Johnson is really nice too it has a weird blur to it again it has a plasticky lens kind of feel but don't worry about being in focus we're not striving perfection on these we're striving for something that's interesting that we can learn from and we might surprise ourselves with and I think that's a really good example of that another image that I want to show you this is from Tom who goes by bike Zilla and I've known Tom for a long time we've been online buddies and he did another still-life thing with these theater masks and I think it's again really nicely done and so it's again it's really cool to see the range of work that people are submitting sometimes it's really adventurous it's really daring it's really abstract and then sometimes it's more conventional but again I guess this is the the awesome thing about photography is we have all these different ways that we can communicate and see things and there's such a range to just the idea of communicating something visually that I think works so well one last one I want to share with you guys this is from Raphael D Swift who I know on Twitter and this is another one that caught my eye the other day when he submitted it and I think it's really interesting because this is actually somewhat of a challenging lighting condition to be in and I don't know if Raphael if he if he set it up to be that way or if he was adapting to it but either way when you limit yourself to one type of camera setting you have extreme highlights in this picture from the snow in the back and then you have the shadows from being under this tent structure with the pile of wood to the right we're really nicely done and I think not only can we learn from our own work on these but we can also learn from what other people are submitting as well and that's the whole idea and why I want you guys to be social with your submissions people still ask me can I just email you my work and the answer's no I want you to share your work I want you to be part of the community and I want you to I mean certainly would be easier on me but you know I'm not looking for easy on me I'm looking for something that we can all learn from and so I think this is the most advantageous way to do that so anyway I wanna thank everybody for who is submitted works so far I will do one of those videos where I've said everybody to music and we put a whole bunch of these in so make sure that you submit your work this week and so today is December 3rd I believe 2018 yeah December 3rd so by the end of the week have your images in like by Friday or something I'm actually going out of town this weekend so when I get back I'll put that video together and in the next couple days I will have your next photo assignment and so anyway if you got any questions drop them below until the next video I will see you guys then later\n"