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Fun with the Holgaroid

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My daughter and I had some fun with my old Holgaroid this morning. My last post had a journal page with some old Holgaroid photos in it and reminded me that I had the camera packed away in a box high on a shelf in my studio.

A Holgaroid is a plastic toy camera with a polaroid back attached. It even uses the old “peel-apart” film from way back when. It reminds me of “Data’s” camera in the movie Goonies. Read all you want about them at Squarefrog, including what kind to buy and film types. I think it is fun to use every once in a while because the photos always turn out a little old and creepy looking…and Polaroids are always instant gratification.

Fun with the Holgaroid via lilblueboo.com
Sienna and my friend Jess (visiting from Chicago for Coachella Fest) in the living room.
I need an external viewfinder for my camera…the Polaroid back covers it up, so we were taking pictures blind. Here is Sienna with the camera….she was still trying to look through the viewfinder.
Fun with the Holgaroid 2 via lilblueboo.com

I had a few boxes of Polaroid film for us to play with but they were obviously spoiled (should have been in my freezer and the expiration dates were 2006)….they STUNK horribly when we peeled the film apart! The photos still turned out okay but different. I had both color and black and white film. I’m trying to find some more Choco 80 film (take a look at the great photos it takes) but it all seems to be sold out everywhere I look and I’m pretty sure I’ll have to get it from somewhere in Europe.
Fun with the Holgaroid 3 via lilblueboo.com

Sienna’s baby dolls by the front door (my flash is too bright)…this picture is a little creepy

Fun with the Holgaroid 4 via lilblueboo.com

St. Francis in the side courtyard

Fun with the Holgaroid 5 via lilblueboo.com

Tattered old portrait of my grandfather hanging on the wall (found it in his attic when he passed away)

Fun with the Holgaroid 6 via lilblueboo.com

Sienna in her rocking chair

Fun with the Holgaroid 7 via lilblueboo.com
Palm tree in the yard

Fun with the Holgaroid 8 via lilblueboo.com

Bougainvillea vine

Fun with the Holgaroid 9 via lilblueboo.com

Baby dolls in the bed (the old stinky emulsion in the film left the ghostly looking shadow across the photo)
Polaroid has stopped producing instant film. I still use instant film and I still use 35mm film, and I am kinda in denial that one day it might not be there for me to buy. There is hope for those of us who refuse to surrender completely to digital:
“Now I step forward to do my part to try to sell Polaroid film in the worst worldwide economic downturn in living memory, and at a period in time where all things analog are under assault in the name of technological progress, product cycles, and economies of scale. But I need a world where people still need Polaroids. And I’m going to try to do something about it.” – Dave Bias

Rasterize a Photo

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I love this poster I made of Sienna playing with the hose in our backyard. If you look closely you can see that the picture is actually made up of dots. You can create your own poster from any image very easily and for free!

Rasterize a Photo via lilblueboo.com

I can’t remember how I happened upon the Homokassu website but it definitely ranks up there as one of my favorites. Their rasterbation program (okay, I’ll admit I cringe when I hear this word…I’m sure they could have come up with a better name) takes any image you upload and converts it to dots. When you are up close looking at the image it just appears to be a series of different sized dots but as you step away you see an image. They explain it better at their site. The cool part is that you can specify how large you want the image to print.  For example, if you wanted to cover a wall with an image you would enter your wall dimensions and the program converts your image to 8×10 inch squares that print as a PDF document and you put them together like a puzzle.
Here is a photo I was planning to cover a wall with at our old house in North Carolina. It was rasterized to be 8.5 feet tall.

Rasterize a Photo 2 via lilblueboo.com

The 8.5 x 10 inch printer output for the small white square I highlighted in the above photo is shown below. The finished image would have taken around 150 pages to print.
Rasterize a Photo 3 via lilblueboo.com

Update: I forgot to mention how I hung my poster. I printed it on cardstock which made it much easier to work with and a little more durable.  I taped it from the reverse and just tacked it up. You could use spray adhesive if you want it a little more permanent or use silver thumbtacks for the corners. I also thought about putting it under a larger piece of plexiglass and using large industrial screws for the corners. For the large one in NC I was going to use wallpaper paste, but I can’t tell you how that turned out because I never finished it!

Mac Photo Books

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I love my Mac. I really, really love my Mac. I love iPhoto. I love Photo Booth. I love iWeb. It makes everything so easy because all the different programs “talk” to each other. Today I realized that I probably need a memory upgrade. I guess having over 4,000 photos and a couple hundred hours of home movies has started to slow down my trusty little computer. That 4,000 doesn’t even include anything from 2007. I already archived those on DVD and sent them to my husband’s office in case the house burns down!

Sorry, this post is starting to sound like a Mac commercial.
Now the real reason for this post….Mac photo books. I love how easy these books are to make and the quality is unbelievable. Once I set the book up by clicking and dragging photos and adding some text, I hit the button “Buy Book” and the published photo book magically shows up on my doorstep a few days later. (Okay, so I had to enter some credit card and shipping information when I first set up my Mac two years ago.) I use iPhoto to make a memory book for Sienna’s grandparents each Christmas. I include all my favorite photos, Sienna’s scanned artwork, and excerpts from my journal.
If you don’t know me then you don’t know that I am obsessively organized. I save everything, label everything, file everything, write down lists of everything….I have notebooks, upon notebooks of stuff. I just have this “thing” about preserving a story, a legacy….it is super-crazy-OCD-nostalgia (read my 2003 artist statement and you’ll see how out of hand it gets at times). When it comes time to put the photo book together each year I have a really hard time narrowing down what to include….I almost have a nervous breakdown when doing it because I just want to include every memory, minute-by-minute. In a perfect world my yearly photo book would be 10,000 pages long (and would probably cost $10,000).
Below are some excerpts from the 2008 book. I couldn’t post the whole thing because it was just too large a file. I hope it will give you some ideas for your own book.
Excerpts From Sienna 2008 Book 

Excerpts From Sienna 2008 Booklilblueboo

If you don’t have a Mac you can download software products such as My Publisher or Kodak Gallery to make a similar photo book. There are so many different things you can do with these programs. Here are just a few ideas….please share more if you have them!

Child’s Art Portfolio: Scan all your children’s drawings and artwork. Add titles, dates and descriptions.
Family Recipe Book: Take pictures of all your favorite dishes and include the recipes.
Story Book: Let your child draw the pictures and dictate the story to you.
Memorial Book: When my grandfather died I took all the best pictures of his infectious smile, the ones with his funny hat, with his roses etc and made huge displays for his wake so that everyone could remember him that way. My next project is to make all of those into a book with the beautiful eulogy quoted throughout.

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