Recently in Holga Category

This marks the transition between old and new. Photos prior to this date were part of my old photoblog, photo.saroy.net. Photos after this date belong to salcantay.net. That's not to say that there's any particular difference between the two. Only that they belong to a different site that I made after a long hiatus. Read into that what you will.

On the left in the background is the same J-2 engine I showed yesterday. On the right in the foreground is the even larger F-1 rocket engine. A single engine produced 1.5 million pounds of thrust -- as much as all three space shuttle main engines combined. Five of these huge engines generated a staggering 7.5 million pounds of thrust to power the first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket. It remains the most powerful liquid fuel engine ever developed.

In other news, I'll be out of town this weekend participating in the MS150, a bike ride from Houston to Austin benefitting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. (The photoblog will be on autopilot.) The Houston-Austin ride is the largest MS ride in the country, with 13,000 people participating this year! If you are interested in sponsoring my ride, please feel free.

Some of the plumbing for the J-2 rocket engine on display as a giant lawn ornament at Johnson Space Center. The engine produces as much as 230,000 pounds of thrust and burns liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen -- the first liquid hydrogen engine used on a manned space mission. Five of these engines powered the second stage of the Saturn V rocket (used to send men to the moon), while a single J-2 powered the third stage. It was the third stage that actually put the astronauts on a lunar trajectory.

Submitted for last week's Photo Friday topic, Plastic, because it was taken with a plastic camera. ;)

This is the last of my Holga shots for the moment. I need to go get some more film -- I didn't buy any when I picked up my shots because I wanted to really sit down and look at how they came out first. For the most part, they came out better than I expected, and now I just want to try more! Especially since I blew through the first two rolls on some fairly boring subjects. I also want to try a color roll and see how that comes out. So we'll see.

This shot was taken right next to the rockets in Rocket Park. The large white wall in the background is part of the temporary structure covering the Saturn V as it's undergoing a much-needed restoration.

Shot from my car window while stopped at a light. This is the final turn in my short (<2 mile) drive home from work. I'm not sure what the black is at the top right -- maybe just a weird Holga quirk? Or actually it may just be my car. I probably shot it as the light was changing to green. ;)

This would have been a throw-away shot, except for two important lessons it taught me about the Holga. First, the film doesn't advance by itself. (Easy to forget when you haven't used film in 3 years!) Second, an accidental double-exposure might turn a boring picture into a more interesting one!

This is the first thing I shot after I loaded my first roll of 120mm film into the Holga. I was just making sure I knew how to trip the shutter, so I shot a frame in the dull and entirely boring parking lot at work. The building on the right houses space shuttle and space station mockups; I don't actually know what the antennas on the left do.

I vaguely remember snapping a photo in the elevator by accident, as I was inspecting the camera lens. Of course I hadn't advanced the film yet. So the ceiling grid of the elevator is seen in the sky of the parking lot shot. I didn't fade the ceiling into the other shot at all; it actually came out of the camera like that. Turned out to be a pretty interesting effect...

These were both taken on my drive home from work. The left shot is the water tower that overlooks my apartment complex, taken from the bridge over the bayou that flows past my windows. The right shot is of the long, surprisingly empty stretch of road just outside the main gate. It's interesting to me how using the Holga and b&w film makes the scene look so rural, when actually I'm smack in the middle of densely populated suburbs.

The same rocket pictured yesterday.

Kylie from BugShots will be happy to see that I have finally rescued my first two rolls of Holga film. I shot them a couple weeks ago, and it took 10 days to get the prints back. Ugh!

In any case, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that almost all of my shots turned out. I hadn't shot film in a while, not to mention that I'd never used the finicky Holga. I had no idea if I was getting anything good at all, and was afraid that I'd get back two rolls of overexposed film!

One of my favorites of the bunch is this shot of the Mercury rocket mockup sitting near the front gate at work. This is the type of rocket that launched Alan Shepard when he became the first American in space. The little tiny black triangle-shaped capsure at the top is all that came back to Earth -- and all that poor Alan Shepard was squeezed into.

I'll have another view of this rocket tomorrow, so come again. :)