If you are an obsessive toy camera user like me, you are probably familiar with the fabulous publication Light Leaks. The theme for the new issue is "Road Trip", and I was fortunate enough to have my image "Ghost Town" published in this edition. My image is on a page with three other equally strange images, including one by the fantastic toy camera photographer Bill Vaccaro, and two great images by Mark Fisher and Susan Lirakis. This is a particularly great edition of Light Leaks, so get it while you can. The last few issues have been completely sold out.
It's a sad fact of life that I can recite line after line of dialogue from the films "This is Spinal Tap" and "Airplane!". But next to those fabulously funny quotes, my favorite bit of dialogue is from a late 1950's film that I have never seen.
In the film "Funny Face", Audrey Hepburn, as a fashion model, says to Fred Astaire, playing the part of a fashion photographer, "Trees are beautiful. Why don't you photograph trees?"
Astaire responds, "I do what I do for a living. It has to do with supply and demand. You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees."
Astaire's quote still rings true today. For me, the supply and demand part involves sitting in front of a computer most days doing post-production and retouching on very hi-res digital photographic files generated by some pretty talented professional photographers.
But in my spare time, I take a lot of photos of trees and such with very low-tech plastic "toy" film cameras, like Holgas and various Diana clones.
And Fred Astaire is correct more than fifty years later.
There still isn't much of a demand for pictures of trees.