How A Boy Name Eli Changed My Life

Is there such a thing as fate? I sometimes believe-to the very core of my being-that there is. People, places, things; they come into our life at specific times and while some remain mundane there are those that change everything for us.

Lomography was one such thing for me. It touched my life and I have not been the same since. It came by the way of a boy name Eli. I cannot even recall where I met him and truthfully I never actually met him. We chatted online and somewhere between the 1’s and 0’s of our internet dialog it came up that I loved photography. He asked me if I owned a Holga. I admitted that I had not even heard of the camera. He gushed about the beauty you could create with a simple plastic camera.

I checked out the camera and was instantly intrigued. Film has always been a part of my life, it is what I grew up on, but this was like rediscovering a long lost love. I knew instantly that I had to harness the magic of the Holga. It was the first lomo camera I ever owned and thus holds a very special place in my heart.

There has always been a longing within me to be part of a movement, to take part in a philosophy that becomes a way of life. I have studied art extensively and longed be part of such great things as the Bauhaus Movement, Modernism, or Romanticism. I want to move and be moved by something wonderful.

The Holga, while my first love in the world of Lomography, was only a toe tip into the great big ocean of analouge photography. Next came the SuperSampler, then the fisheye, and from there I was amazed to discover that blooming within me was the very thing I had always wanted…a calling, a movement I could take and make my own. I AM Lomography.

Returning to my roots has taught me more about the art of photography than any digital camera ever could. Lomography opened up a whole new world for me and all from the simple words of a boy who flitted into my life for a mere moment in time and then was gone again. Fate.

written by geekgoddesskilobyte on 2011-07-01