Well, here is the 50th image from New York City. I think I’ll end it here with a slightly different view of a New York City icon. This image was made from aboard a Statue Island boat heading towards the Statue of Liberty. My good friend that was the impetus for this whole trip, Murray Lawrence, is seen with the light shining through his glasses, straining to see out the window to get a glimpse of Lady Liberty as we got close. It was a wonderful trip Murray, I only wish things had worked themselves out differently, but I guess life has it’s ways. We’ll have to go on another foray together again someday.
I have really enjoyed working on these images, and transforming them into a Lomography type Holga look, was very satisfying. I think it adds some charm and uniqueness that just doesn’t come across in your everyday digital snapshot. When everything is clear and undistorted , photographs can have a very clinical clean feel to them, kind of along the lines of listening to CD’s instead of a vinyl LP. I’m not saying that superb images can’t be made when everything is perfect or that CD’s don’t have a good sound, just that they’re different. There is a place for both and really can depend on a persons mood and feelings. I’ve worked these images before trying to perfect them, and sometimes it worked. This past while though, reworking them in a different manner, has been a joy and very rewarding. I found that I have chosen some of the same images as the first go round, but many of them are images I never considered as holding any value visually. Hopefully you have enjoyed these images. I plan on doing a few different things photographically than I am used to doing. For example, I have an old Kodak box Brownie that I am going to load up and a Holga pinhole panorama camera that looks to be a very exciting camera to work with. Where this will all lead I don’t know, but I do know that I can’t wait to get out shooting again with a different outlook to what the final product might look like.
Collin J Örthner - Photographer 