Sunday, 10 May 2009

Obsession

I'm obsessed.



Start!
(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!

Television and Blind Shadows
(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.

Post Box
(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.

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