Give it a good 30-90 seconds
Truth be told, it wasn't any real love of antiquated technologies that led me to Polaroid. It wasn't, like some, hell many, other things in my life, because of a girl.
In all honesty, because I love each and every single person reading this, it was because of a Stephen King story, in which a kid finds a Polaroid camera that is, of course, haunted.
Right away I went and dug out of the closet a Polaroid camera of my mother's, wondering if, just maybe, that camera would be haunted, too.
By the by, I was 19. Only child, vivid imagination and whatnot.
That was, aw man, 11 years ago. 11 long years. And, other than a short three month dalliance with a Canon A80, I have only used Polaroid in those 11 years. I've moved, almost methodically, from one kind of Polaroid to another, from the easy consumer version you find at any drug store, to a ProPack, which uses peel apart film, to the Polaroid 680slr, my favorite camera in all the world. Using those cameras helped guide me towards a deep down body love of photography, something I can guarantee would not have happened had I "gone digital."
With Polaroid, there is that sense of accomplishment when you take a good shot. From the simplest to the most complicated in the their product line, it is easy to take a "pretty" shot, of trees, or the sky, flowers or long shots down a street. But taking a good shot, a shot that makes use of tricky lighting, or that captures someone in a shockingly honest way, that takes work. Polaroids are deceptively hard in that respect, and with only ten shots per pack, you have to work to pull it off.
But I am a lazy man, and so Polaroid also enables me to skip out on some of the more, to me anyway, tedious elements of photography. Too lazy to drive and have your photos developed? No problem. It's does all the developing for you. Give it a good 30-90 seconds, and you've got your picture, all done, no post-processing required. Not happy? Take it again.
But know that to do so depletes your extremely limited supply of film. Ten shots. You have actually got to think about your shot, as opposed to just setting the Multiple Exposure setting and sifting through the hundreds of shots for a good one.
There is premeditation involved. Forethought. Sure, you can buy several packs, go on a photo shoot and take pictures 'til the sun goes cold, but deep down, you know that each shot cost around $1, that's one dollar you just spent trying to get your dog to sit still, that's another dollar you just wasted because you forgot to turn off the flash. That's one more bad photo to go in a box somewhere deep in your closet, never to be seen again.
But even those that you hate, those that remind you how much of an amateur you are, they exist. You can hold them, touch them use them to remind yourself of the fact that you still make mistakes.
A single Polaroid is an artifact, good or bad, a tactile representation of what you've photographed. I can't help but smile every time I think of the fact that I've got thousands of Polaroids lying around my house.
That I can actually touch a photo I took back when I first started taking pictures. I can hold in my hand that shot I took of that girl at camp I snuck into my cabin that year, the same year I locked my keys in the car, used a rock to smash the window, then told my mom it was a deer what did it. I was there, and so was the photo. I will always be able to prove I was there, because the photo was there. There's no faking a physical Polaroid. It is, for good or bad, evidence.
o get specific, and not a bit nerdy, I use a Polaroid 680 right now. For me, it's the camera I was born to use.
I like to get as close as possible to a subject, so with the 680 being able to focus in at 10 inches, I no longer have to yell at a camera because it's not getting anywhere near as close as I want it to. It allows me to move in past what is normally comfortable for my subjects, to create a degree of trust with my subjects, because you've got to trust someone who's well within your bubble of personal space. The 680 uses a sonar to autofocus, because I'm lazy(see above). But you can also switch to manual focus, when you're feeling all pro. And it uses the ubiquitous 600 film, which can be found for ridiculous prices at any drug store. It's compact, good for being on the go, and it...well...bascially it's a Transformer. Starts as a flat rectangular box, but with a few manipulations pops up, revealing the bellows and camera face. Damn pretty, and I giggle every time I show it off to someone.
One of these days, they'll stop making Polaroid, and on that day I'll have myself a good cry. But until then, I'll keep using it, deeply in love with a camera and film process that outsold any other back in the golden age of 1982, with a camera that so squarely allows me to do everything I want. You find something like that, you damn well stick with it.
Oh, and Digital's for panty-waists.
By: Luciano Noble II
The Back Alley Tabernacle
Web Portfolio, ooh, and also, Original Polaroids available FOR SALE here: Split Second Collective