Tag Archives: Polaroid

Crown of thorns

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It’s ‘Roid Week on Flickr, so I thought it would be a good time to post this shot I made in Wichita a few weeks back:

Crown of thorns

This is part of what used to be a roller coaster at an abandoned amusement park called Joyland. The place was closed, then sold, then re-opened, then closed again, and finally abandoned. Now it’s slowly decaying while the rides and other structures gradually (occasionally…) get dismantled and torn down. Apparently it’s quite the magnet for urban explorers in town, but I didn’t really want to deal with the legal issues involved with hopping the park’s fence, so did my photography from outside the barriers.

I made this shot with a Polaroid OneStep Express camera and Impossible Project PX 600 Silver Shade film — a combination I’m really warming up to. It seems to be particularly good for street and decay shots (although, at $3 per exposure, a bit pricey for everyday use). Given how far this place has fallen from its heyday, the black border on this film seemed appropriate, a way of both commemorating and mourning this decay.

Leonine

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When my dad passed away some years back, among other things I inherited an old Polaroid camera. It was buried in the middle of a bunch of boxes, and at the time I couldn’t see much use for it — but didn’t have the heart to give it away. During a recent clean-up, I ran across the thing again and decided I should either use it or chuck it.

Luckily for me, you can still get film for the thing — and clumsy as the camera is to use (manual focus w/o rangefinder, fixed aperture, etc.), it can still take a good picture:

Leonine

I made this diptych using (expired) Polaroid 100 Sepia Giambarba film from The Impossible Project. Sadly, the IP folks couldn’t save the old plant that made this kind of film — so when they run out of the old (but obviously well-preserved) stock of this stuff, it’s gone for good. But while it lasts, this is fantastic film for anything you’d like to give an antique touch — and as you can see, the (normally disposed of) negative can be art too!

The subject of the image is a Marzocco Lion (at the Museum of Outdoor Art in Englewood, Colorado), a carved replica of an original by Donatello. BTW, the camera is a Super Shooter Plus — you can get one just like it for $5 – $10 on eBay.

Echinacea, 7/09/11

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My first decent shot using an old Polaroid SX-70 camera I bought off eBay, and some Impossible Project film:

Echinacea, 7/09/11

Long-story-short, now that the Impossible Project folks are producing both color and black and white film for SX-70 cameras, I thought I’d take the plunge and start experimenting with low-fi analog photography.

Here’s a shot of echinacea in our front yard, taken with my used / new (to me) SX-70 Alpha 1 SE and Impossible Project PX 70 Color Shade film.

I think it’s going to take a while to get a hang of this — the camera works just fine, but the film is a bit… tricky. In particular, it’s REALLY light sensitive for a minute or so after it comes out of the camera — and it’s prone to over-exposure too.

Oh, and did I mention film costs about $3 per exposure? Definitely gives one cause for reflection before pushing the shutter release. Once I get this down to a more-nearly-repeatable thing, I’ll do a writeup on this film and the whole process of using it.