Through

I think it might be a distant relative of this one.

Tracks

Another one showing the Elbe. From the second roll with the Holga, taken on Good Friday.

Square bike

So, yeah, I bought a new camera. I spent a whopping 17 Euros for a brand-new Holga. (Actually, I essentially got it for free, but that's another story.)

I somehow had the feeling that I needed something new to "revitalize" my photography and there certainly is a lot that's new (for me) about this camera - for example it's the first time I ever shot square pictures and it's the first time I ever had to deal with medium format film. And that doesn't even take into account all the quirks the Holga is famous for.

What bothers me a little bit is that analog "toy" cameras are kind of a fad in these digital days. I'd rather use something that's totally uncool. (But as a consolation to myself I note that even luminaries like Sylvia Plachy or Michael Ackerman use Holgas every now and then, so it's obviously possible to just use them as tools instead of making a fashion statement.)

Anyway, filling the first roll felt "liberating" in a certain way because almost everything was different from shooting with one of the Leicas.  I certainly won't use the Holga as my only camera in the future, but you will likely see more square photos in the next weeks.

Oh, and some things rarely change: The film was Tri-X as almost always.

Merry-go-round

This is more about what I wanted to see than what I actually photographed, so some post-processing was needed.

The hole

By now, you can probably guess where this is.

Another tree

More than ten years go, I was presented with a Lomo LC-A. I think it was a joke at that time and I ran maybe one or two films through the camera and then put it away.

Last month, though, I pulled it out of the drawer for a change. Here's how it rendered a tree near our house.

Bus

And while we're talking about buses, here's one taken from a bus window in Brooklyn last year.

Harbor

A part of Hamburg's harbor as seen through the window of a bus on a foggy morning a few days ago.

Unrelated to this picture, I'd like to recommend two small photo books that I recently bought: One is Tangente by Laurent Chardon and the other one is Elsewhere by Øyvind Hjelmen. Both show only photos in square format which is something I didn't like very much for years. But it seems I changed my mind recently.