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:

Flip Video + iMovie 08

I recently bought a Flip Ultra camera. It works straight away with iMovie 08. I like the way iMovie shows the film strip when zoomed in, and this is making my brain whirr a little. Reminiscent of Brendan Dawes' Cinema Redux.

Cycle Path

Last May/June I went for a ride out along a new cycle path which I can see from the train every day on the way to work. On the first day it rained very heavily, and on the second day the poppies were out in full effect.

Gallery

More information on the route, and the meaning of the stripes (if you can't guess from the clue in the sculpture) can be found here.

Change

When I did my MA in 2003-2004, I made some experiments with video and panoramas down at Stourbridge Common in Cambridge. Nothing very ground-breaking, but there is something about visiting the place where Newton supposedly bought his prism.

A couple of years later I went there to take my first panorama with my panosaurus.

And now I go back there today with my new (to me) Garmin GPS device to try some Geotagging (more on that later). It's clearly been a while, even though I'm not that far away because firstly I see they've almost completed a new bridge across the Cam nearby, but a tree I have often photographed is no more. I always feel a bit sad when a tree gets taken down, but I seem to remember that this one looked a bit spongy in the middle, so was probably brought down before it came down.

Here it is, still standing in Google Maps

Old Glass

So, it's 2008. Looks like spring might happen sometime soon.

I seem to be keeping up with my 1 upload a day to flickr, and have only had to put pictures up from the back catalogue twice. Amazing! And 20 days in! Many of the pics have been sent direct from my phone, and a few (many) are not that exciting to look at, but it's a record of something. I'll figure out what in December.

I've ordered a handheld GPS device, and am looking forward to some geotagging. And maybe some other things over on the other side of my life.

Not all the pictures have been taken on the iPhone. The one above is my trusty D50, but instead of the large, heavy (and wonderful) 17-200mm I usually lug around, I used my old 50mm 1.8 manual lens that dates back to the early eighties. Having to guess the exposure, but that's rather fun. Unfortunately every day I want to go out with it has been rather miserable and grey, so all I have to show for the experiment so far is a picture of daffodil buds taken at home. Quite a nice quality to it, I think. More to come when the sun comes out.

edit: 28 Jan - Hubris update

Well naturally I failed to upload an image the day after making the above post. And on another day that week too. The shame.