White Horse, Sad Dog

Today is World Toy Camera Day, so I wandered downtown this morning with my Truview (Diana clone) and PIX Panorama. Yass may be small, but the subject matter was plentiful — thanks to a yellow smiley balloon in a car yard, an alley and a couple of kids eating chocolate in the shape of gold coins, I went through the film in both cameras in just one block!

I was reminded of yet another reason why I love toy cameras … you get fantastic results at any time of day, even if the sun is hot enough to melt the plastic lens.

I ran a 35mm film through the Truview, using wedges of foam to make it fit in the 120 film cavity. I love the resulting look of an image sprawling over the sprocket holes — it both foregrounds the photographic process and shows viewers the film type, a snippet of information that is rarely shared, but so often appreciated.

Obviously today’s shots haven’t been processed yet (the joys of low-fi photography), so I spent this evening working on a couple of others taken about a year ago. I photographed the white horse grazing in the churchyard on Leake St in Bowning, a tiny town a few minutes drive from Yass. The sad-eyed puppy is at once tacky and touching. It's attached to a grave in the Hall Cemetery on the outskirts of Canberra.