This year I decided to enter Holga Week for the first time. I thought why not, I have 3 Holga cameras:
Holga 120CFN
Holga 135
Holga Pinhole

Plus I was recently featured on the Holga Argentina website. So I feel all Holga’d up 🙂

I loaded all the cameras up with Fomapan 100 intending to push them to 400 during processing. You could enter 3 photos for the following categories:

Street, Nature, Portrait, Pinhole, and Select.

The ‘select’ category is every photo entered, but the winner is chosen by the other participants…like me. The photo with the most votes in each category is the ‘select’ winner.

For the 135 I used most of the film around my home, just getting a feel for the camera and film again as I hadn’t used that combination for a while. I always have to remember Holgas can do multi exposures as I tend to forget that. While walking around the local wood, I tried to do multiple exposures of the tree trunks, but they didn’t quite come out as I envisioned.

I think I did a few too many exposures, but I was worried about the darkness. I might try that again on a brighter day.

I also tried a few close ups of the reeds, but the weather quickly deteriorated and I headed home.

Once there I looked around my garden for subjects and found some petals and a spiderweb.

At this point I decided to give up and literally went to bed…to test the flash.

Well, I still had a few frames left on the film so the next day I decided to take the 135 and the two 120 cameras to Huddersfield to meet a friend.

With the last of the 135 shots I took some shots around the town.

Once I developed the roll, there was nothing really that rocked my boat. So I didn’t consider any of the shots I took with this camera for submission.

What about the 120CFN?

I actually prefer this camera to the 35mm Holga and decided to rope my friend into a few shots. She is great and tends to do whatever I ask of her in photo terms, a perfect friend in this regard. She was disappointed you couldn’t see her gorgeous nails…honestly they are lovely 🙂

I ended up choosing the first and last ones of these photos. The first one as the street photo, and the last as a portrait.

I also bravely asked a guy standing outside a pub for his photo, but he was very suspicious of me and that made me nervous. So I didn’t get as close as I would have liked.

Such a shame as he was a great character.

Lastly, with this film I tried to take a panoramic by overlapping frames. Unfortunately, it was my first time trying this and I move the camera from right to left instead of left to right. I have now drawn an arrow on the back of the camera which helped the next time I took the camera out as you will see.

Ok, so that is two of the three photos chosen. I tried the CFN again on a trip to Dearne Valley Country Park. I really wanted to get the panoramic right for the nature category. Plus I had just received a fisheye lens for the 120 camera. Unfortunately, the photos had to be taken during a set time, WEEK, and for these shots I was out by a day. I am honest so I didn’t choose any from the roll I took, which was fine by me as I didn’t care for them much. I did get the panoramic right though.

Now I have the technique down, I will try it in a few more locations…hopefully with clouds.

The fisheye was interesting too, it was still a bit dark when I tried it.

And on to the final camera, the pinhole, which I also took to Huddersfield. I loved all the photos I took with this camera on a mini tripod. Here are some of them.

As the tripod was mini and low to the ground I didn’t look through the viewfinder. So I missed the head of the sculpture, another reason to go back with the camera, or the CFN and fisheye.

As I was meeting my friend one more time the next day, I decided to reload this camera and try again. I wanted to try a ghost shot. A photo where she sits on a bench and then halfway through the exposure she moves to leave a ghost impression.

Again, I should have got closer…damn, I really need to pay more attention to HCB.

Ok, and that was my Holga week, not quite in order. All that was left was to choose the photos and take a selfie with my cameras.

And these are the shots I decided to submit.

• 

• 

• 

I don’t think they will win, there are so many great photographers out there. I did enjoy the week though and am already looking forward to next year.

This is only the second competition I have entered. Many photo competitions ask you to pay to enter, which I can’t afford right now. This one was free. The other one I took part in was the 2019 Buxton Photo Challenge where I got a few honourable mentions. I was going to take part this year, but…COVID.

Now all that is left to do is wait for the results and vote for my favourite ‘select’ photographs from the other submissions.