Camera Tossing may be the big fad nowadays, but Bryan has been doing it since before it was cool.

On the subject of camera tossing though, I discovered the other day that Ryan Gallagher, the guy who started the whole cameratoss thing on Flickr, posted one of my images on his CameraToss Blog. That's pretty cool. But man, those parallel lines in some of the other images posted are awesome. I still need to pick up some rope lights :)

After yesterday's outburst about my photographic desires, I realized that my upcoming trip to Scotland would be a perfect opportunity to play with new toys. I struggled briefly with the dilemma — $1700 lens or $15 toy camera? After fierce internal debate (and some wise words from Jing-Ta) the scales tipped in favor of the Holga, and I placed my order for the camera and 12 rolls of assorted medium format film (I'm sure you can find medium format film in Scotland, but it was only about $2.50 a roll so I figured it was a good idea to stock up just in case).

Now that I own a medium format camera, it's time to figure out how I'm going to about developing these monstrous negatives. After some furried (what? I mean flurried) internet searching, I've decided on a game plan: to begin with, I'll just mail off my film to A&I for processing and printing. Once I get a feel for it (and am sure the camera isn't going to be relegated to the growing pile of abandoned infatuations in my room), I can buy an enlarger and the other parts needed to make prints. I'll still mail my film off to be processed, but I'll make my own prints. After that, if I feel the need (and find a suitable area for a more permanent darkroom), I can obtain the materials for processing the film myself as well, and do away with mail-order altogether.

The nice thing about having a darkroom would be that I could finally start shooting real B&W film in my 35mm film camera, which I've been avoiding so far because I haven't found anyone in the area who will process it.

I'm excited about the Holga, because I was growing very tired of my surroundings. In the city, everything is gray and square and dirty. When you get out into the more rural areas, it's nothing but green. I've grown bored of both and find neither setting interesting nor worth taking pictures of. I'm hoping that the Holga will provide a new approach to photography (one of forgetting the rules of careful focusing and metering); a fresh perspective that will make mundane things seem new again. And playing with negatives the size of the palm of your hand sounds fun. Let's see how it plays out.