Old, New and New-Old

Ben's been going on and on about a new photographic experiment this weekend, and it took me some time to understand what all the fuss/fun was about.

He recently bought a 60mm Holga plastic lens which is meant to give the pictures on his big camera an  appearance of toy camera photography.  (Here are some experiments he did with a real plastic toy camera on film.) At the end of that lens, he stuck one of our plastic magnifiers, his is big and x8, mine tiny and x10.  The setup allows us to feel a very personal involvement with the object and especially the photographs; the larger x8 magnifier yielding photographs we liked better than my small x10 seen above.

I've been trying to understand interactions of colors in my red cashmere warp sample better, in particular the combination of several reds in the warp and a dirty orange weft.   

The experience of photographing in this manner as well as the photos confirms my naked-eye observation the dirty orange is "lifted" by the warp colors, (I've been describing it "pinkified" which cracks him up,) and you can see the different reds in the warp a little bit.

A tad moodier than a shot with my tiny camera, I think the new-contraption photo conveys the loveliness of the cashmere better, and I think it's a little more than the difference in the sharpness of focus or closeness. 

Or maybe it's just a Sunday evening thing.