‘Roid Week was a great experience for me. I decided to fully embrace it and not use any other camera (well, until the last day when I went back to an abandoned factory and so HAD to use my regular camera).
I had a steep learning curve. At times I was very frustrated, but being forced to take extra time with each shot so as not to waste the film—to pay even more attention to composition and color—was a good exercise. I only had the FP-100c film (Fuji instant color), and I laughed at myself the first few days when I kept expecting the film to come out in black & white. Or at least look vintage! Apparently just using an old camera, some part of my brain thought the photos would look just as old. The other part of my brain thought they should look that old. I had to pay more attention to color than I already have been training myself to do with my 52 weeks self-portraits. One of my last Polaroid photos was a self-portrait, in fact, though I had to use a bit of assistance (human tripod and shutter pusher, thank you to Gwyn).
The group pool on Flickr blew me away and it was quite humbling to be posting my first attempts among such masterpieces. It was great to see all the different effects the different models of Polaroid cameras create and I was reminded, “everything old is new again.” Check out some of the brilliance there, seriously. You won’t regret it.
Since it was my first time, I’m fairly happy with my results, and proud of myself for learning quickly and gaining some understanding of how the camera works. I think this is my favorite shot, mostly because the guy in my local camera shop (that is sadly going out of business) explained the Zeiss viewfinder to me and how it is supposed to work. We had rain for most of the week here and on this day I went out in it with a tiny umbrella over my shoulder to try and catch the raindrops in a puddle on our driveway. I was really excited to have captured them with any clarity using this hulk of a camera:
You can see all the Polaroid shots I took during the week in the set I created.
