TexasGirl Photography

Further to my last post, I am staying on the topic of locations that you just can’t help but photograph, no matter how many times you visit. I suspect it’s safe to say that most photographers know places like this. Regardless of the repetition, I am incapable of going to the Laguna Gloria without a camera and without making photographs.

I went on Thursday, which is the museum’s free day, with a friend and her daughter. We chose the morning, hoping for cooler temperatures, and I packed a couple of lomo-type cameras to play with. One of them was my Diana Instant Square. Mine doesn’t look like the one in the link; I got it on sale last summer-ish with a whole haul of different lenses for it (that also work on the regular Diana, which is handy). The kit came with different viewfinders to attach depending on the lens in use.

The truth is that I am not particularly fond of the camera. Sometimes the photographs are just plain terrible, or don’t work the way I expected them to at all. This could be user error, or my having overzealous expectations. But I have a small store of the film so I thought hey why not. I took a quick look at it before I shoved it in my bag, saw the viewfinder on top it, thought it was for the fisheye lens and that it was unnecessary because there was a regular one built in to the camera, and removed it so it wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle.

When I arrived and went to make my first photograph, I realized that the camera now had NO viewfinder at all. Oops. Live and learn! I shrugged it off and decided to just go for it, eyeballing the area and letting go of that aspect of control. Here comes the irony: the images that popped out of the camera that day are by far the best I have managed to make with it!

I’m not sure where this leaves me with the camera, but I am at least reevaluating my feelings about it. Not all of the photos are perfect, but as usual the imperfections don’t bother me much. After all, I am grateful to have been able to come home with anything at all after my snafu.

As the folks at Lomography say “Diana is unpredictable, just like you.” I guess in the end I am ok with that!