In this video on the birth of instant photography, there’s a short piece of archive footage from the 1950s that shows partygoers gathering round the back of the first Polaroid Land camera to see the picture develop, and they have the same expressions that we use nowadays while gaggling around a digital camera’s LCD screen. Touching little echo which makes instant photography all the more endearing. http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/29594-invention-the-first-polaroid-camera-video.htm
Hoorah hoorah, new films for the Polaroid SX-70 instant camera. Love the story behind this company and can't wait to get my hands on the new monochrome films, which are apparently on sale later this week – bet they sell out in hours!
She hands me a manila envelope, tipping it to spill old slides and prints into my hands. "Have you scanned these in?" I ask. "I don't know how," she says. "Then they don't exist," I reply. It's bedroom-level profundity, but I surprise myself by believing it more than a little bit.
I pick up a photo of her father. He's spread out on a bed with his shirt off, his infant daughter sleeping in a bundle on the floor beside him. The little tab in the corner of the print says "1982".
"My mom never liked having that picture of him in the album," she says. "She thought he looked too sexy." I tilt the picture in my hands just a bit until I can see the scratches on the matte surface. There are hundreds of little indentions, tracks from fingernails showing the many times the photo has been held.
When we scan this picture in those scuffs will disappear. The rest of the world will see only the young, bearded man smiling in some sepia living room. They'll increment the file's viewcount by one, leaving their own perfect hash mark. It won't be the same as the photo I'm holding in my hands, shifting in the light to read its physical metadata, but it won't be inferior, either.
A very thought-provoking piece of sad-but-beautiful writing about digital memories by Joel Johnson for Gizmodo. Worth reading in full.
Just because you can document and share nearly every moment of your life doesn't mean you should. Stop worrying so much about stealing away with an image or a clip that perfectly crystallizes the night, like a trophy to collect, another document to catalog, and just experience it. Enjoy it. There's not a camera on the planet that can capture the way a concert makes you feel. Take one picture. Mark the occasion. Then put your goddamn camera down.
YES! This. I went to a Black Kids gig in Manchester early last year, and apart from being the oldest person in the room (not kidding) I also felt very out of place for not having a mobile or compact in my hand, filming the entire gig. What do they all do with all these videos?
I saw a factoid today that the amount of data captured/created by humans in 2009 surpasses the amount of data captured/created by humans in all years up to 2009, and I can well believe it.
01. What is PechaKucha 20x20 ?
PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.
I'm spending a few moments between subbing the magazines' pages by exploring the interesting world of being a "digital creative". After several clicks from page to site to page, I eventually washed up on the PechaKucha website. This celebrates a form of presentation (named after the Japanese term for the sound of conversation - "chit-chat") where each individual shows twenty images, each for twenty seconds. It keeps a limit on the time-frame (stopping creative types waffling) and also helps to focus watchers on what's being said.
This would be a great way to demonstrate photography projects, either with other photographers or even just part of a group of artistic people who all have projects or hobbies to share with each other. Nice idea.
I was originally into this blog about a year ago, then restumbled across a group of old bookmarks in my browser and rediscovered it. In her FAQ she says she's shooting everything on film after falling back in love with the format (sounds familiar!) and some of these, though they look a little Poladroidy to my admittedly untrained eye, are simply stunning.
But the cost, the cost! Yeouch. As much as I would adore to shoot all my food work on Polaroid, thanks to the cost of a pack I would have to remortgage the cottage to do so. Fingers crossed that the Impossible Project brings out something cheap for my SX-70 in a few months' time..
Beautiful writing and blog though, worth poking around in.
You know when you get hit sideways by a screaming train of WANT? That just happened to me. Polaroid silk scarves by Philippe Roucou, made from "found" Polaroid prints. Be still, my heart.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's installation at Barbican Centre, London.
Quite relieved to see it's not just me that's obsessed with potholes, but at least Pete is doing something with the anger. Very clever idea (and some other nice projects on his website)
So, with these cameras made from photographic paper, the camera IS the photograph?
My brain hurts. This is just fantastic.
However, you will learn how to light in a dark room, which will be the single most important skill in your repertoire. If you can make it look like natural light, you will be extremely successful. Nothing personal to all the natural lighters out there, but when a big project is on the line, one rainy day and you're fu*****. Who cares if you're good with your DSLR.
Wow, that says it pretty succinctly. This is part of a larger piece from AskMeFi on how to become a magazine photographer, which is chock-full of useful information and tips (most of which are those sort of tips that are "obvious if you think about it, but you probably won't think about them because they're pretty scary and involve a lot of work")
I definitely need to learn to light my food work more effectively. At the moment I'm very reliant on decent daylight, as this post points out, and tend to shut up shop as soon as the light fades – but this suits the style of imagery that I'm making at the moment. I don't have deadlines or scary photo editors breathing down my neck. However, in the dark British winter this does mean that the hours where I can take pictures are severely reduced in number. And I don't ever want to find myself in the position where I have to turn down a job because I don't have enough daylight to supply the images that the client's after!
Something to think about.
As soon as I can scrape together the cash, I am going to buy myself a bike from this gorgeously styled and terribly knowledgable little bicycle shop in Hastings' Old Town. Actually did a double take when walking past the shop window at the weekend, and lingered outside for about two microseconds before dashing inside for a lovely chat with the (bike mender? bicyclette?) hugely friendly lady running the shop. Great art inside as well, and some fab bike photographs. Love it!
