Category: Photography

The photography shoot was today and it went good. We originally had 4 different locations we were going to shoot but in the end I had to kill one because it wasn’t going to work out. I really like shooting ads in Lebanon. The quality of work you get from here is really world class. The photographer we were using is really the best one I have ever dealt with. For people living in Lebanon you might have seen his work, he does all the Aishti and Aizone shots. The Aishti work is so good that I used to think they were shot in Europe and was surprised when I found out they were shot in Lebanon by a Lebanese. Anyway I come back to Kuwait on Saturday, can’t wait.

This is what I call a photography studio. This picture only shows half the place, there is still a similar sized area to the right of this picture. The studio is on the 4th floor of an old warehouse in an industrial area. There is a large lift that fits cars, thats how that benz is up on the 4th floor. Its actually higher then the 4th floor since the first floor is like 4 stories high and then the rest of the floors are as high as this studio. S

Why don’t we have studios like this in Kuwait? How hard is it to find a large warehouse and turn it into a studio?

Awhile ago me and Nat drove up the mountain a bit to check out the snow and fuck was I shocked. There was A LOT of fucking snow, like a lot more then I had expected and imagined. I don’t remember a Christmas where there was this much snow by now. I got up to Faytroun an area before the ski slopes in Faraya and I had to turn back because the car was starting to slide and slip. I took some pictures though and video, the temperature was minus one. I will try to get the video online but here are the pictures:

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4

Update: Here is the video, you probably need quicktime to view it. [MPEG 1.8MB]

I got a really cool book today called The Polaroid Book. I haven’t opened the package yet so I don’t know hows the book inside. I just really love the books package and I am afraid to open it. Looking at the reviews on Amazon it seems other readers also didn’t want to open the package. I guess I will just keep the book closed until I get bored of the package and then tear it open.

I took the old film I found to get it developed today. Turned out it was empty.

Around 2 or 3 years ago I got a really old medium format camera as a birthday gift. I don’t think the camera works or if it does I haven’t figured out how but today I found the camera in my closet and when I was fiddling with it I noticed a hidden compartment. When I opened it up there was a role of exposed film just lying there. I don’t know who its for but I am guessing it belongs to the person who owned the camera previously. I am not an expert in cameras but I think the camera is over 50 years old at least… I think, so if there are any pictures on the film they should be interesting. Tomorrow I am going to take it to have it developed, hopefully I will have something interesting to share with everyone.

I just developed my first roll of colored film with my Holga camera and the results turned out to be pretty impressive. I really prefer color over black & white shots any day and if you compare my shots this time around to my previous black & white ones you can see why. The colors turned out very vibrant and the Holga effects were more obvious this time around. Click on more to see some other pictures.

I was just checking out pictures taken by a regular commenter on my blog (Hudis) and I found pictures of the Kuwaiti desert but like nothing I had ever seen before. We have mountains in Kuwait? I am guessing this is the Mutlaa Ridge near the Iraqi border and it looks like an amazing place. I didn’t think the pictures were in Kuwait until I noticed a car in one of the pictures had a Kuwaiti license plate. This place looks like a cool place to rock crawl with 4×4’s. [Link]

I just got my first shots with the Holga today. Results were fairly decent. I like the square format of the photos but in general the photos look like they could have been taken by any camera. I guess thats a good thing since this camera did cost me only $20. I was hoping to see more weird effects like the picture above if you notice the bottom left area of the picture you can see it blur a bit. Now that I know the camera is working I am going to load it up with some cheap color medium format film and take some more shots. If you would like to see 3 more photos click on more.

Just a quick update on my Holga. I just gave in my first role of black & white film to Boushari. Its going to cost me around KD5.500 to develop 12 pictures. Turns out they charge 4 times the regular amount to develop black & white pictures because they have to develop them manually. So in conclusion these 12 random pictures I took better be fucking good and even if they are this is the last time I will shoot with black & white since the whole Holga experience is supposed to be dirt cheap. I never liked black & white photography during university so I don’t know why I bothered to try it again now. Anyway while there I picked up some colored film, cost me only 550fils, really cheap.

I finally got my Holga camera yesterday and it feels as cheap as I was expecting it to be. For a $20 medium format camera I wasn’t expecting it to be anything more. My Holga is a 120N which is the latest version of the Holga and has a number of features and improvements over the older 120S . Bulb mode and two aperture settings, sunny and cloudy (f11 and f8) are the most important new features for me. The packaging it arrived in was equally as cheap which was very fitting. The whole camera feels like a Burger King kids meal giveaway. Once I got the camera I went and purchased black & white medium format film. It cost me 750fils (like $2.5) and I can take 12 shots with it if I shoot my pictures in 6x6cm format or 16 shots if I shoot at 6×4.5cm. I chose black & white randomly just to see how the outcome would be. I started taking pictures today and once I have them developed I will post the pictures here. For now you can check out pictures of the camera below.

Holga Front Shot
Holga Back Shot
Holga Box
Holga with iPod Video

I have been wanting to shoot with medium format film for like forever but I was never able to because the camera I wanted was too expensive. I wanted the Hasselblad 503CW which costs around KD1000 in Kuwait (like $3000) which is too much to pay for something I might end up not using that much. Even a second hand older Hasselblad 501 cost hundreds of dollars on eBay. So I put my dream of shooting 6×6 pictures aside until I found out about the Holga. The Holga I believe is the cheapest medium format camera you can buy, It is very cheaply built and takes 6×4.5cm or 6x6cm shots. The lens is made from cheap plastic the same way the whole camera body is also made of cheap plastic. There are also not allot of options on the camera either, it has a fixed shutter speed and a fixed aperture, the only thing you can control is the focus and even that has only 4 options. So how much does this camera cost? Believe it or not only $19 without flash and $29 with flash. Thats like super cheap. Now the coolest part of the Holga camera is the pictures. Because of the way the camera is cheaply built the effects you get on the pictures are amazing, they look like pictures that were shot by your parents back when Madonna was still a virgin and Michael Jackson still black. I already ordered mine from Amazon without flash of course since I don’t think I have ever used flash. Once I get it I will take a couple of pictures and post them on this site. Until then here are two galleries of pictures taken by the Holga camera.

Gallery 1 (Colored Shots)
Gallery 2 (Black & White Shots)

Click here to check out the Holga on Amazon

Was flipping through my Miskan archive when I found this picture dating back to February of this year which for some reason I never ended up using. Looking at it now I think its a lot cooler then the image I finally decided to use that day.

Todays B-Side is from a car wreck near McDonalds on the Gulf Road.
Click here for the Miskan post.

I just got an email from 23HQ (previously 23people). They have moved out of the beta stage and are upgrading all existing users to a free 2 year plus subscription. 23HQ is like flickr except not as crowded. I personally use it to put my favorite photos on and I also love the fact that my username is “mark” there. You can check out my favorite pictures by going to 23hq.com/mark