What would you shoot if I asked you to take a photograph of “summer”?

That’s a question I posed last June, when I solicited 12 random Twitter followers to participate in a photography assignment called “Project Diana”¹

The premise was simple enough: I would load a plastic “toy” camera with a roll of color 120 film (12 exposures), put it in a box with simple camera instructions, a Field Notes pad and pen, and prepaid pre-addressed labels. I’d send the camera off to the first contributor, they would shoot their photo, write a description of it in the notebook, and then re-box the camera and mail it off to the next participant. By the end of summer, I’d have the camera back, process the photos, and see what came out.

I chose a toy camera for a lot of reasons, primarily because there was no way I was going to put anything more expensive in the mail, lest it get lost or accidentally broken. But mostly I picked it for ease of use, and also because I love the lo-fi look it produces. I figured that over the 12 exposures, the quality of the photos would average out; no matter how carefully (or poorly) framed or lit each shot was, they would all produce the consistently hazy and dreamy look that is the signature of Lomography.

The Holga camera used is particularly known for its quirks — light leaks, poor film transport, etc. And though all of the people involved were nervous to some degree about “getting it right”, I was in fact hoping to get some strange results and mistakes. Sure enough, two of the photos taken resulted in a double-exposure. The two folks who shot those frames might not be tickled with the result, but I am giddy about it. The resulting photo shows both a carnival ferris wheel and a summer-sized serving of gelato. Outstanding. Lomography at its best.

When I finally got the box back from the last participant a couple of weeks ago² and processed the film and read all of the notes, I expected to have something profound come out of it. Something that would generate a larger story and a poignant message. But I didn’t find such a thing. What I found was that the project itself was the point. It started out simply for fun, and that’s how it ended. A tiny creative effort between twelve people around the United States who had mostly never met. They all had fun doing it, and I had a blast as well. I was thrilled just getting the box back in the mail—to have put a camera in a pristine box in June, and have it come back to me on a cold November day, banged and dented and enlarged by obscene amounts of packing tape and layers of labels—and seeing that inside the little box was the same camera I’d sent away, only now it was full of the analog creativity of people I knew only digitally. That in and of itself was the biggest joy for me. To be able to share the results now is simply the proverbial cherry on top.

So, having said all of that, please take some time to go look at the photographs on Flickr. These shots show the summer of 2009, from the viewpoints of twelve great people all over the country, shot on one continuous piece of film.

Oh hai, ladybug on my tree. Please tell your neighbors to stop falling onto my laptop while I’m working, m’kay? You’re cute, but I’ll squish every one of you if you don’t stop interrupting me.

(via delgrosso)

(you can also d/l this as an iPhone wallpaper here. Because I’m nice like that.)

Taking in a film at The Little.

Nerdwear edition

office helper (via me)

Also resized for use as desktop wallpaper (WALL-E-paper..?):

2560 x 1600
1920 x 1200
1680 x 1050
1440 x 900

cleversimon:

After wasting an afternoon taking pictures of a broken tricycle, moss on trees, and the shadow of a wrought-iron fence, Churchill Alternative High School senior Jessica Ivers falsely informed family and friends Saturday that she was getting into photography. “I love the way real film looks,” said Ivers, who has owned the old single-lens reflex 35 millimeter camera for exactly one week…

So what’s the right way to get into photography, then?

According to most critics on Flickr and Photo.net and such, the process is as follows:

-Be older than 45 and start every photography conversation with “I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and…”
-Have a lot of expensive current gear, as well as some expensive vintage gear.
-Talk about that gear in purely technical terms at all times.
-Understand that your gear is the Right Gear, and everyone else’s is the Wrong Gear.
-Be pedantic about every minor detail of your lenses, and make sure to commit every spec to memory including, but not limited to, exact weight in grams, focus throw, and circle of confusion.
-Never use squishy words like art, interpretation, aesthetic, composition, or beautiful. Photography is for technicians, not creative people who don’t know the proper way to use their gear.
-Have a full portfolio of technically perfect but visually lifeless photographs. Wide landscapes, mountains, trees, and deer are popular subjects.

I think that’s a pretty good starting point.

Which one of you would like to go out and shoot with me today? Bessa? Hassy?

(via ~Draken413o)

i has a hat

(via me)