Sprolga-rama: Panoramic 35mm Holga mutliple exposures

Sometimes doing a show can lead to some surprises. Two lightbulbs went off at last Friday night's opening. The first one was more of a reminder than a revelation. I need to print more often. Prints just read differently than images on a monitor. Sometimes it's surprising what you think is a good image on the monitor vs. what happens when the image is 2 feet wide on paper. Thanks to J.W. for this discussion. The second light bulb was talking to Robert Holmgren about his Holga-rama pictures, and then viewing his latest work. The strategy is to shoot multiple exposures with a Holga by only winding part-way between shots -- creating a layered panorama.

The neighborhood sprocket hole images I make with a modified Holga are already 2:1 aspect ratio, what happens if I layer 3-4 images together? Yesterday I went on a long neighborhood walk in the Berkeley hills to find out. The experiment was quite stimulating.

The image at left combines a shot of a stairway, a lost dog poster on a pole, and some nearby grass together into one image. I'll be experimenting some more with storytelling through layering multiple images onto one frame in these Sprolga-ramas. I even made an 11 shot panoramic portrait using a flash on the Holga at the art opening on Friday! More info on this technique, and using flash with the Holga coming up in a few days.

Thanks to everyone who attended the opening on Friday. And thanks to Robert Holmgren for being part of the show, and inspiring me to try something new with the Holga. If you missed last Friday's event, I'll probably be down at Lucky Ju Ju this Friday the 8th to play some pinball.