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.

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

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.