'Roid Week November 09 - Day 5

And so, the last day. So many great pictures! I've put together two galleries of my favourites, so you can see my top 36: Gallery 1, Gallery 2.

My last three pictures were taken in early September using the rest of the pack of expired Time Zero I'd had in the forest (see day two). My bike had a puncture, so I walked to King's Cross station in the beautiful sun.

Little Argyll Street is directly across from where I work. The colours on this film proved unbelievable. Pinks greens and blues. Lovely.



A bit further north, on the junction of Great and Little Titchfield Streets, the light on this building was fantastic:



By this point, I only had two shots left in the pack, and I really didn't want to waste them; when might I ever use a film with these qualities again? (the other Time Zero I used in France (one here) came out quite different, leaky glowy. Very nice, but different). So the camera went up to my eye many more times than I pressed the shutter. I'm glad I waited. Off Gower Street, in the complex of UCL buildings, is this amazing place:



Some more 'Roid Week reflections to follow.

'Roid Week November 09 - Day 4

Sad to miss day 3 due to being in hospital, but I had day 4 ready to go when I got back on Thursday evening...

Back to the forest, and what felt like the end of a season. It was the day the clocks had changed, so it got dark early, but thankfully there was some lovely light still. This was some 779 film from a Polapremium promotion, and it had managed to get a bit of frost on it in the fridge. No adverse effects though...

This is lens flare. Or wood-spirits:

'Roid Week November 09 - Day 2

It's day 2! (Well I'm actually writing this on day 3, but if I lived in Hawaii, there would still be an hour and a half to go...)

The theme seemed to be back in the forest, this time using some 2003 expired Time Zero film. It was the first time using Time Zero, and it was lovely: amazing colours and feel - there's some urban ones for later in the week. This was another film sent by the inestimable Anne Bowerman (flickr & etsy)

Anyway, here they are. And yes, I wish I'd had a tripod for the third one...

'Roid Week November 09 - Day 1

I've been looking forward to this second 'Roid Week since it was announced a couple of months back. I knew I would be at work, so may not have many opportunities to take pictures, so I kept some in reserve, just in case.

Lucky I did.

On Saturday night (Halloween) while preparing a pumpkin, my knife slipped, and my left hand is now bound up, awaiting surgery! Ouch! So no new photos at all...

However, as I say, there was a reserve. Here is day one, Monochrome Monday:



This was my first attempt at using the close-up attachment with my Land 250. It's great because it allows a closer shot, but frustrating because with the lens a good few inches away and down from the viewfinder, the composition is a combination of guesswork and testing. I also racked the exposure to its lightest position, because it was producing dark results.





These two were taken on expired B+W 600 film in my SX-70 (with ND sheet from mypolastore). The film was sent to me by the ever-amazing Anne Bowerman. Thank you Annie!

Do check out the 'Roid Week Pool. I'm loving so much of what is up already, and it's only day one!

World Toy Camera Day - 17 October 2009

The weather forecast was for beautiful, crisp autumnal sun. The weather forecast was wrong, at least for the east of England (friends further west were luckier, I believe).

So, knowing the Holga needs quite a lot of light, I fitted it out with the Polaroid back and some Sepia film from PolaPremium (ISO 1500).

I only took three images as it was mostly too gloomy, and one of the shots was too dark. But the Bracken above came out perfect, like a spooky Victorian memory. The tree is nice too.



So two thoughts: Firstly, that sepia film has a really lovely quality, very smooth with a glow to it. Secondly, I hope there was better weather for others!

To see what people have produced, check out the Flickr Group.

More Polaroid News

Well. One week the last Polaroid film expires, the next the owners of the Polaroid brand announce that due to the interest in The Impossible Project, they are going to start remaking classic Polaroid cameras!

Huge congratulations to Florian Kaps of IP, and to the determined and wonderful Anne Bowerman, Dave Bias, Jan Hilmar and all the other tireless PolaPremium bods who've made it all possible.

I can't wait.

Here's a link to the official notice from Dr Florian Kaps at PolaPremium.

Polaroid in the news

Friday 9th of October marked the day the last Polaroid film expired. The expired film will be good for a while to come though, gradually revealing randomness and unexpected art through the decaying chemicals.

I was recently on holiday in France, and one pack of SX-70 Time Zero film I had had expired in 2006, and had apparently been stored in the back of a drawer (not ideal conditions!). The results were lovely:



(the rest the pack can be found here)

But there will be new film again. The Impossible Project is constantly in the news it seems. (Check out the link on the right hand side of their site). Here is a news item from More4 in the UK from Friday night:



And of course, old, beautifully stored (and often beautifully presented)film can still be bought from the wonderful Polapremium!

Oh, and there's another 'Roid week coming up in November...

Three of a kind

On any outing, always go prepared for every eventuality.






Nikon D90 with 50mm 1.8 lens





Polaroid SX-70 with TZ Artistic film





Holga 120 GN with Fuji Superia X-Tra 400

Polaroid Artistic TZ

Further to the Poladroid post, this is a good example of the crazy colours Artistic TZ produces. It looks like a painting (probably accentuated a bit by my using my SX-70 with its mouldy lens...)

Artistic TZ was made with expired chemicals by Polaroid, hence the unusual tones. It's also "manipulable" (you can push the developing emulsion around). It's lovely.

These are not the 'roids you're looking for...

The spirit of Edwin Land is alive and well! He is busy commenting on Polaroid-related tweets, wry and good-humoured. But if something is going to get him rattling his ghostly chains, it's Poladroids. Poladroid allows you to input a digital picture, and with a recorded Polaroid ejection sound, out comes the print which slowly develops before your eyes, on your computer. So far so fun. The pictures have a grubby, fingerprinted frame, and the the image itself looks nothing like a real Pola: colours are weird (not Artistic TZ weird, but artificial), and there's a strong, square vignetting that I've not seen on any of my real Polaroids. They have the appearance of someone's memory of how Polaroid images look - indeed before I got back into the instant saddle, I thought they were quite cool. But I never thought they were actual Polas.

Others think otherwise and Mr Land responds...

"Edwin Land channels his inner incredible hulk whenever he sees a "droid" or someone raving about how real they look. Grrrrr."

"Oh @KatieHammel "poladroids" are not cool. You know what's cool? Shooting real film. 35mm, medium format, and yes, POLAROID."

"Those are NOT POLAROIDS!!!!! @danieleagee NEW Photoblog: Polaroids! http://bit.ly/AXJx6"

"your "classic polaroid" @coloroflifeinc is a fake polaroid so how is that "classic"?"

I think we can see what's going on here. People discover Poladroid (fair enough), they play with it (it's fun) they post the results calling them real Polaroids. Edwin Land's eyes flash green and his shirt starts ripping. He's not alone. There are many Polaroid groups on Flickr, and all of them say "No fake Polaroids!". Polaroid can be an expensive pursuit these days, especially as the film gets harder to find (although PolaPremium will sort you out with a smile and awesome packing tape), but there are many people out there who are deeply passionate about the aesthetic of instant film who get worked up by this digital imposter, marching around pretending to be the real thing. A bit like the scene in the first Naked Gun movie where Frank Drebbin has stolen the opera singer's clothes and is butchering the American National Anthem on television, but with the singer's name under his image on TV. The tied up singer watches, weeping.

But hey, the kids like it and all they need is a bit of education and redirecting to understand the difference. Let them know you can still get cameras on ebay and film from PolaPremium, and I bet they'd dive straight in.

And then Newsweek decides to get involved...

It's a shame that the hook of the article (called "Polaroid Lives!") is about how Poladroids are the replacement for Polaroid as the author has some nice things to say about the experience of taking a Polaroid. I especially like:

"The Polaroid serves as a palpable re-minder of the pleasures of good old-fashioned remembering... it materializes in real time, making it the only form of photography that transcends mere documentation to become part of the moment it's meant to preserve; we blow out the candles, look at the Polaroid, and archive both experiences as one."

That's definitely a big part of instant photography for me - I get great pleasure from the actual taking of pictures, and to have the results as a print in your hand moments later, rather than looking on the back of screen, adds a wonderful stage to the process. And then there's the aesthetic experience of the images, whether in your hand or on the screen, or as a print, and this is where his argument leaks. Poladroids come out making a Polaroid sound, they have a Time-Zero frame, they fade in to develop. But they don't look like the real thing, and he says that as Polaroid is over and obsolete, this is as good. This is the replacement. This is the new Polaroid. Not really. Maybe if I could hold my iMac up, take a picture with its iSight camera and have a physical Poladroid drop out the bottom...

He mentions the iPhone app ShakeItPhoto (which I rave about in my Digital Instant post), and I may appear to be hypocritical here, but I feel they are different things. Where Poladroid takes your pre-existing images, and turns them into a "nostalgic" simulacrum of a Polaroid, you actually take a single picture with ShakeIt and wait for it to appear. Rather than snapping away and sorting it out later, it forces you to stop, compose with your fixed focal length, and vitally wait before you move on. And while the frame is a type 80 square, the image is contrasty and saturated but not distorted in its colours. It's a very different experience.

But what's more important is that Polaroid does live, but not as a digital fake. An amazing range of people are creating an amazing range of images using this "dead" and "obsolete" format. One point that has angered the Polaroid people (myself included) is the poor research in the article that leads to this statement: "A group called the Impossible Project even leased an abandoned Polaroid factory in the Netherlands and recruited a team of former Polaroid technicians to invent a new instant film". Why the past tense? He makes it sound as if the Impossible Project was indeed impossible, and was abandoned.

And Time (which featured Edwin Land on its cover in 1972) has an article about the Project this month. A very encouraging article indeed.

Back to EdwinLand: "Hey @Newsweek THIS is how you write an article about #polaroid film (Time wins!)"

NEW film for Polaroid cameras by Christmas. Oh my.

Polaroid Lives!

Digital Instant

"The best camera is the one that's with you" - Chase Jarvis

The above quote and linked post are obsession feeders. It's very easy to get stuck into the "I don't have my Polaroid/Holga/D90 etc etc with me" mood, and not bother taking pictures when they present themselves. I always have my iPhone in my pocket, but have tended to treat it as a lightweight snapper, a little too low-res, a little too electronic, to take fully seriously for grown-up photography. But Chase Jarvis is right - it's the best one when it's the only one, and creative use of the many applications for the camera take it further.

ShakeItPhoto

Now obviously my previous post extolled a love for the analogue wonder of Polaroid, but I'm not a purist. I'm mainly a bit lazy and impatient. But I like image-making and particularly image-taking, and almost enjoy the finding of potential images and capturing them more than actually doing anything with them. It's great to shake up a usual way of working with different lenses, cameras etc. Polaroid is great because of its restrictions - fixed lens, press the button and there's the image. Digital can seem somewhat disposable and overly flexible by comparison: zoom, snap, zoom, snap, discard, snap.



My current favourite iPhone photo app is ShakeItPhoto.

"ShakeItPhoto is the most realistic instant photo experience for the iPhone. Works just like a real instant camera. Watch the photo develop. Shake your iPhone to make it develop faster. Our Perfect Processing makes your photos look just like the real thing." (From the application page in iTunes)

Well. Of course it doesn't look "just like the real thing", and the dropping down of the 'print' with SX-70 sounds effects, and a longish wait for the image to appear is silly if cute.

But.

It makes you think differently about the images you're about to take. The delay stops you from just snap snap snapping; the colour effect and frame add a weight that the images wouldn't normally have; you can't convert a previously-taken image from your library - you take the image and it processes it. And it shoots square. Lovely, lovely square.



The important thing is to make the images. If Polaroid film was limitless (or cheaper), I would absolutely carry it with me at all times and shoot away. And certainly there are many of these shots that I would rather have as a 'real' photo that I could print larger, that didn't suffer from the digital noise. Perhaps I should buy a Holga. Oh dear. Another obsession looms... But until then, this is the best camera, because it's the one I have on me.

post script

An article from today's Boston Herald discusses the future of the Polaroid brand. It mentions an instant camera based on the PoGo technology. Sounds interesting, out next month...

Obsession

I'm obsessed.

(Cambridge to Shelford cycle path)

A friend forbade me from mentioning Polaroids when meeting up last weekend, because I had been swamping her Twitter timeline with posts about instant photography. Fair enough. It's not for everyone. And I talked about it anyway.

Can't help it! Obsessed!

But what's great about this latest obsession of mine is I started getting into it just before Spring 'Roid Week 2009 started on flickr. Perfect timing!


(Blind shadows on television)

'Roid week was my first real experience of the flickr community thing (what was I doing before?). The mission was to upload three Polaroid images a day, from Monday the 5th to Friday 8th of May. The fun of a mission, checking other people's works, commenting and being commented on. Adding more contacts from incredibly talented people. And the generosity of spirit! Sadly for me I was really ill one day, so couldn't even summon the energy to upload from my backlog, but I flung myself into it on the other days.

I had a blast, and am looking forward to the second incarnation of it later in the year. It's great to find so much shared obsession. And discussion! One thread in the forum was whether one should leave the Polaroid frame on or off when uploading. I started the week with, but ended the week without. I guess one's allowed to be flexible in these matters.


(Postbox)

Here's my complete set.

From the group

As to my favourites from the week, well I think I picked about 120. Here's a few:

Lady Vervaine's view across the lake in St James's Park, London towards the illuminated London Eye is absolutely breathtaking. Go there now.

anniebee had loads of lovely pics from a market. Hard to choose which one I like best, but I'm going with Violets. Annie is a great Polaroid campaigner and promoter and supporter of others' works. A real force for good in the world. She sells pictures on her shop at Etsy.

Speaking of Etsy, futurowoman also has a store there, where she sells this fantastic image of a succulent in a cup on expired film.

redlomo's picture of a busy street in Hong Kong is all legs leaving the frame in creamy Artistic TZ film.

girlhula's May is for Roses is a beguiling portrait of a hat; sproutgrrl's stairs are simple and beautiful; + chi +'s little deer is cute and dreamy; Let'sExplode's photostream is something else - I love the camouflaged figure in the flowers...

I could go on, and on, and on and on. Check out my favourites to see. And check out the discussions and the group's daily favourites for a really good overview.

So what did I learn from all this?

The social network aspect of Flickr popped into focus for me - the community and generosity makes me want to do more.

It kick-started my feelings about being a photographer again - I'm going to take it more seriously; amazing what a bit of external validation can do.

Etsy! I want to sell pictures again (I used to have a market stall in Cambridge) and this seems a really good way to go about it. I will investigate further.

Be careful when bidding on ebay: I have some expired Time-Zero film coming. It cost much more than is sensible. It may not even produce images. But it may produce amazing images if I point it at the right things.

I'm obsessed.

Hip to be square

Again, it's been a while....

So anyway, once more I'm propelled into blogging due to new equipment! Well more accurately old equipment: a Polaroid SX-70. It is a thing of beauty and engineering ingenuity: folding to the size of a paperback book, unfolding to produce images almost instantly. It's an SLR! It has leather casing! It was given to my father in the early 1970s by a colleague in the advertising industry, and was given a service in 1980, and has laid dormant on shelves for at least 20 years. The wonderful thing about the SX-70, is that as the battery is contained within the film pack, it worked perfectly first time. Wonderful.

(My first shot in about 25 years)

The great thing about getting into Polaroid is there are a lot of communities out there on the internet - notably Polanoid for showing off your shots (here's my currently somewhat diminutive profile - link on the right to see pictures), lots of Flickr groups, and the very helpful Georg Holderied Salvisberg shows you how to take one apart to repair or modify. And then there's Polapremium, a shop for all your Polaroid needs - cameras, films, books, accessories.

Which brings us to the not so great side of Polaroid. It no longer makes cameras or more importantly, film. Fortunately for me, just around the corner from my work is The Photographers' Gallery which has a wonderful bookshop which also sells pinhole, Holga and Lomo cameras, and Polaroid film. This is the last batch of the stuff, with expiration dates in September this year (not that out of date film is a major impediment to the modern Polaroider). I picked up a pack of TZ Artistic film which has creamy, muted colours (see above), and is a bit expensive. This is the only correct speed film for the SX-70, but it is possible to use the less expensive 600 film if you modify the camera (permanently or using a neutral density filter on the lens or on the pack). Boots in the UK seems to still have stock of 600 film at a reasonable price.

All is hopefully not lost! There is The Impossible Project which aims to restart making film. I really hope they do it.

As to the actual camera, it is in great condition (my dad looks after his stuff). One slight problem is that there is a strange mouldy-looking bloom in the rear of the lens. Thanks to Georg's site, I know how to take off the lens housing. Unfortunately, the camera was built during a brief period where Polaroid thought using 1mm square-headed screws was a great idea. Cheers. It seems impossible to find the correct implement, so modifying other tools seems to be the way to go. No luck yet, but getting closer.

My enthusiasm for this magnificent piece of technology has spurred a colleague from work to get one off eBay! Fun ahead...

And finally, a great little movie explaining the SX-70's workings and philosophy: