Going Gaga

Here is the news:

"Lady Gaga named Creative Director for Speciality Line of Polaroid Imaging Products"

More subdued, was the uncovering of the new instant film cameras designed by Polaroid, referencing the old One-Step design, but this time with fake wood finish. Fake wood! I need one! (Not really). Also announced was a new digital camera with a built-in printer, allowing the best of the old and the new. Possibly.

Gaga's statement in the press release seems to emphasise the digital side of things, which suggests to me that she's going to be all about branding on new digital devices. Although, canny marketeer that she is, I can imagine she would want to be in with whatever seems trendy/popular. I wouldn't necessarily worry too much about an iconic company getting in to bed with the latest thing.

Polaroid's statement in the same release seems somewhat more alarming:

The partnership with Lady Gaga is the most recent in a string of partner announcements by PLR IP Holdings, LLC (PLR), the new owner of the Polaroid brand. In the past six months, PLR has assembled a family of Polaroid partners for product development, marketing distribution and licensing. Building upon Polaroid's rich history, the Polaroid partner network will support fans and users of classic Polaroid products and deliver new Polaroid products to a new generation of Polaroid customers while staying true to Polaroid's long-standing values of fun and simplicity.

(my emphasis)

What makes me uneasy about all this is very well put by @jeffrawdon over at his Existentialmonkey blog. (Such a good blog post, that I've scrapped my first draft of this one, because he put it so much better than my ramblings)

But I do want to emphasise a few points, because they can't be emphasised enough. Polaroid is an iconic brand, based on iconic products and ideas. Edwin Land's astonishing development of instant photography, was mainly due to the implementation of hard work, passion for photography, experimentation, and magic. The instant, peel apart films were his first miracle, and the integral packs and design of the SX-70 were his crowning achievement in my eyes. Seriously, the SX-70 system is just astonishing.

Sadly the company lost focus, didn't modernise, and seemingly went the way of other well loved companies who couldn't keep up. Various bad things happened to the company, and all it ended up as was just the name associated with the iconic products of the past, tainted with mediocre products of the present. And when every modern camera creates an image you can see instantly, who cares about smelly, messy chemical processes that are expensive with large factories to run? So the new Polaroid owners shuttered the factories and took apart the machines.

Except...

But that's not the whole story. Again to summarise (read an excellent version on Wired UK's site): the Polaroid factory in the Netherlands is about to close, an incredibly enthusiastic Austrian called Florian Kaps persuades the factory manager Andre Bosman to keep it running, and the pair set up The Impossible Project to restart the factory and create new film for Polaroid lovers.

In parallel, a number of enthusiasts led by Sean Tubridy and Dave Bias, along with Anne Bowerman and others, became Polaroid evangelists, setting up the website Save Polaroid to do just that. Anne and Dave then became a part of the Impossible Project as the American wing of PolaPremium, a venture set up by Kaps to sell remaining stocks of old Polaroid film, raise money for the new film, and sell that when it comes out this year. Next month should see the opening of the New York store.

All this activity is absolutely incredible, and The Impossible Project is built up by people passionate about Polaroid photography, a photography made of chemicals and magic. But magic isn't going to pay the bills, and the film needs to be bought in sufficient quantities to make the enterprise a worthwhile one. One way to ensure that's a reasonable possibility is to build up the buzz needed to seep into public consciousness, so that people know that something is coming, that instant film is NOT dead. And the Impossible Project has done an incredible job of this! (See their site of last year's activity to find links to world media coverage)

This has woken the sleeping Polaroid to the awareness that people are still wanting to use the products with its name on! Except, they're only wanting to use the OLD products, the ones they no longer make, THE ONES THEY NO LONGER MAKE ANY MONEY ON. Well that can't be right for the owner of an iconic name, to have someone else make money off the back of it. Even if it was something they had thrown away. So they make will new instant cameras! Hooray!

And then they will announce those cameras without any reference to the people who are actually making the film those cameras will run on. Without mentioning that the passion of Florian, André, Anne and Dave, as well as all those at the factory which Polaroid had actually closed, working to make The Impossible Project possible is what is getting those cameras made in the first place.

Nicely played, Polaroid.

Lady Gaga almost seems like a diversion. We don't know what (if at all) her involvement will be in the new Polaroid cameras. I'm not really in her target audience. I would be more in line for a Medeski Martin and Wood instant camera (holy crap, that's a great idea!). In fact, I would be much more the target audience for The Impossible Project's planned camera. I don't know any details about it, but I know I want one.

Which again goes back to the passion about the process of instant photography. It's not trendy. It's not a trend. Lady Gaga is trendy, but unless she's adaptable, she won't have the longevity of the Madonna brand. Whereas people like me want to keep making images with this unique technology, for the pleasure of the process and the results, and want to keep doing it for years to come. Hopefully some of the Gaga fans will get drawn in and this is what turns them into photographers. Who knows? How many Spice Girls fans got turned onto photography through the SpiceCam?

Hopefully Polaroid's new-found interest in instant film won't overload The Impossible Project, but will allow it to grow and develop. Selling more film should be a good thing, as long as there's enough for me. So I'm going to keep one eye on Polaroid's actions, but not my serious eye, as that is looking straight at the more important work of The Impossible Project.

Florian, Andre, Sean, Anne, Dave and the others: keep doing what you're doing. There's a passionate community that cares desperately about your work, and who will look back years in the future at the photographs taken with the film you are making happen. And who will look up and as one say the now immortal words of the spirit of Edwin Land on Twitter:

@edwinland: "Who the hell is Lady Gaga?"

EDIT: 09 Jan 2010 - added info about Sean Tubridy in origins of "Save Polaroid" site.

2009 in film

So then, that was 2009, eh? How to summarise it?

Um...

Oh yes - in general, photography, and specifically, POLAROID!

At the beginning of the year I had a few cameras: a Nikon D50 was my main workhorse, with my iPhone with me at all times. In a couple of cupboards I had my dad's Nikon FM, unused for years, my first generation Mamiya 646, also unused. No need to use film - digital is where it's at!

Brendan Dawes on twitter mentioned this online store called PolaPremium which seemed to be selling Polaroid film and cameras, and also about The Impossible Project who were working on a plan to bring back instant film. Sounded interesting.

Then I went to the new Photographers' Gallery on Ramillies Street in London, just around the corner from where I work, and saw all the delicious film cameras in their shop, and a wall with Polaroid film for sale. Interesting. Didn't my dad have an old SX-70 lying on a shelf?

And so it began. In the spring I visited my parents in France, with a cartridge of Artistic TZ in my bag. The camera worked fine, and the obsession took hold. He let me take it back with me, just in time for 'Roid Week! (Here are my pictures from Spring 'Roid Week 09)

I'd already been on Twitter for a bit, mainly just tweeting amongst friends. 'Roid Week opened that right up introducing me to the Polaroid focal point which is Anne Bowerman. Anne and her partner Dave Bias were behind Save Polaroid. They are the American wing of PolaPremium and The Impossible Project. (Dave also designed the Medeski Martin and Wood website. My. Favourite. Band. Ever). Anne's tireless work, enthusiasm and encouragement through Twitter and flickr is the glue which joins the new Polaroid community together.

Also through 'Roid Week I found out about Etsy, again through Anne, but also through the fantastic work of the fantastic Nancy Stockdale and Lauren Beacham. I set up a store, and while sales have been slow, it's great to have an outlet for prints. One of my aims for 2010 is to push my store a bit harder.

So in brief, the world of analogue photography re-opened for me. And this resulted in accumulations... I'm now the proud owner of:

1. SX-70
2. SX-70 Sonar
3. Polaroid Land 250 Automatic
4. Polaroid 3000
5. Polaroid ProCam
6. Lubitel (which I don't like and will sell)
7. Holga
8. Polaroid back for the Holga
9. Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim (thanks to Jess Hibbard for being my enabler with that one!)
10. Vivitar 3D camera
11. Digital Harinezumi
12. Olympus Trip 35 waiting to be picked up from the post office. 

(click on the links to see the pictures I took)

I may have forgotten one or two cameras in there. Oh, yes, I also upgraded my D50 to a D90, and got a lovely 50mm lens for it. That will do for now, although a Hasselblad and Polaroid 600SE are needed, of course.

As the year went on, I found a wonderful subject for my cameras in Thetford Forest. Shot it with 600 film:



I shot it on Time Zero:



I shot it with Blue Polaroid film:



And on my Vivitar UWS:



And on my Holga:



(Forest shots here)

I went to France three times:



(more France shots here)

There was another 'Roid Week in November...

And it was a year of getting to know many great people through Twitter and Flickr, many fantastic photographers, too many to single out, although special mention goes to Jeff Hutton who devised his brilliant and generous Polaroid Giveaway Project, which saw him sending out originals on the condition that recipients posted an image of the Polaroid. I went out on Christmas day to the forest with his image of the Rockefeller Center in New York (taken on Chocolate film for 'Roid Week in November):



So there you have it! Happy 2010, everybody. May your year be full of exciting and interesting photographs. May mine be full of Impossible Project film!

'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!

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: