Sometimes the best way to be a travel photographer is to barely have a camera at all -- at least that's what we found on a recent two-week trip through Spain and Portugal. Using just an iPhone and a Holga, we created "Spain and Portugal, Squared," a collection of photos in which we explored how we could meld images from a plastic film camera with pictures made on Instagram.
Whether you call it lo-fi, or hi-fi that looks like lo-fi, we found it to be a perfect marriage of the new and old.
Even though we stood in identical places, we knew our pictures wouldn't be the same. After all, with Instagram you can double-check the composition and select from a range of filters, while with a taped-up Holga, you have to rely on experience.
As we drove west from San Sebastian and scaled the mountains of Cantabria, then descended through Asturias on the way to the Galician coast and finally hopped a train for Portugal, our cameras were always by our side. We always had an excuse to buy another espresso and slice of cake while recharging the phone, and we were lured into Porto's Mercado Bolhão on our way to buy more film. For us, a detour for photography is always worth taking.
