That's a huge bitch!

Yea, that's right... big body, clunky, low maintenance... red... made in china?!? Her name is... (see picture below)

Jeff, meet Holga. Holga, this is Jeff
Photo by Eric (not with Holga)

So for my birthday this year, Abbie got me a large, plastic Chinese camera with a German name... jzreyupHOLGAyunmi (all of the letters are silent except h,o,l,g, and a... I believe it may be Sanskrit). Before I get to the pictures, I will show you her modeling shoot...

The many facets of Holga
Photo by Eric

Let's go through the basics (and by "basics" I mean the "every-details")...

The Holga has 2 shooting modes normal (normal) and bulb (where the shutter stays open as long as you have the patience). The normal shutter speed is roughly 1/100 sec (at least until the spring wears out, or until Jeff cuts it). So setting my camera's shutter priority is a little simplistically problematic...

The Holga has 2 aperature settings designated by symbols: a sun (f/11) and a cloudy (f/8)... no confusion there...

There are four distance to which you can set the Holga to focus (designated by symbol of course): a person (1m), 3 people (2m), 6 people (6m), and a mountain (10m - infinity inches)... the last conversion baffles me as I have no idea how many meters that is...

It shoots medium format film (it can also shoot 35mm but needs some help) in one of 2 orientations: 12 shots of 6cm by 6cm or 15 shots of 6cm by 4.5cm (in the shots below, I opted for the latter). The lense is made of plastic, and my flash (not standard on all Holgas) has 4 different color settings: Red, blue, yellow, and white (and a few combinations in between). The camera has no automatic wind and no mechanism for preventing multiple exposures (awesome), and most (not mine so much with the color film, we'll see how it affects B/W) leak light like a sieve... but enough of that, let's see some art... or at least some pictures...

Abbie better get to "da choppa," b/c someone's got her in his sights...
Photo by Eric "Predator" Lang

Daisy was all like, "Look where, you ass?! How am I supposed to see anything in this pitch dark roo.... owwww! my eyes!!!!!"
Photo by Eric

Jeff getting his first dose (3.5 hrs worth) of Guitar Hero III... i'll friggin hit YOU with my best shot... ass
Photo by Grumpy Eric

Jeff did a fantastic job keeping my head relatively level on this double exposure
Photo by Jeff

At the club with Glowstick Lang aka, Mr.E... This was taken with Jeff's D40, and the Holga's blue flash as a "manual" off camera right flash... my reactions are sick when I'm all E'ed out, look at those pupils!
Photo and flash by Eric

By the way, I didn't edit any of the pictures except for some very simple cropping... I wanted to post the raw images for everyone viewing pleasure! Please click on the link below to see the other pictures!!!!!!!!!

Check out the slide show of all the pics!!!!

Tahoe

Quick catch-up post from last weekend at Tahoe before the pimp post (it will make sense later).

Eric celebrated his birthday and return to climbing after two long months off with the extremely technical, invisible skateboard handplant over Emerald Bay.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Abbie running a couple laps on a V1ish arete at Bliss State Park.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Eric eased his way back into climbing by doing a jump start to a small left hand crimp (his bad hand) on this V3 at Bliss.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Drive-by-shooting of some tourists taking a picture of trees or something. Aren't they beautiful?

photo - Jeff Sillcox

While I'm Complaining...

Pain in the Neck

I've fallen off the last hard move of The Buttermilker (V13) three times now. I did the stand start variation last February and for some reason, those extra two moves are killing me. And I keep hurting myself. My neck is constantly sore from the ridiculous head-undercling/headbar that I use for the first move and I managed to tweak something in my wrist about two months ago when I fell off near the end four times in one day (probably some kind of overuse injury, duh). Anyway, I left it alone for a couple months and tried it again on Monday with no expectations. I fell off the last move on my first try that day. So why haven't I sent it? Must be fear of success. So here I am, three weeks from the official start of summer with a forecast for upper 80's and low 90's for the next week. Might have to start trying it in the middle of the night. Has it ever been done in June? Maybe I'll wait a few weeks and go for the FSA (First Summer Ascent).

Me not sending a year ago...

photo - Eric or Jamie or Jim (can't remember)

Boneyard Action

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Welcome to the Boneyard. This place may have had other names in the past, but with all the bones and animal parts I've seen out there, there's no better name. I feel like I'm being hunted by a mountain lion when it starts to get dark and I just have to squeeze in one more new problem.

I could go on and on about how beautiful this area is, but I'll let the photos do the talking. Let's get the artsy photos out of the way though so we can get to the climbing...


photos - Jeff Sillcox

Eric and I spent an afternoon putting up a few problems back in October. Check out the post here. But the full potential of this place has only just started to be realized in the past few weeks. Andrew Stevens, Jeff Honeywell, Wills Young, and a handful of others have ventured out with me and the current problem total stands around 47 with some very nice lines still unfinished.

If you still think Iron Man is the best V4 on the East Side, you're wrong. You were wrong even before this beauty went up, but now you're very wrong. Jeff H. nabbed the 4th ascent (pictured below) about ten minutes after Wills cleaned it ground up on the FA.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Eight feet to the left is another 20ft perfect patina face that goes somewhere in the V7-V9 range depending where you start. Here Wills cruises the easier ground above the hard moves on the FA.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Andrew on the 2nd ascent of nice V2 wave/arete problem that will probably end up with a dumb name like The Wave, La Arete, La Angle, or La Balance.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Nathan Stevens working a project that he found and cleaned.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Wills trying to find some holds on the FA of another hard, balancy line. I finally completed the line just to the left of this in the perfect orange patina yesterday. I used a pretty ridiculous sequence that is probably V10/11 and then Wills flashed it with the good beta that might be a grade or two easier. More pictures of that line in the previous Boneyard post.

photo - Jeff Honeywell

One of the few named problems... Twin Dongs (somewhere in the V3-V7 range). Jeff H. works out the moves into the dongs...

photo - Jeff Sillcox

...and Wills flashes it for the FA.

photo - Jeff Sillcox

Lots more to come... Wills and I were getting pretty close on another nice project yesterday and I failed miserably last weekend in the heat on another line that has good holds, but all face the wrong way.