Hello everyone. I’m very pleased to announce a new segment here at the blog, Real Polaroid Friday. The title pretty much explains it. Every Friday I will be posting a new photo taken with a real Polaroid camera. There has been a trend over the last few years among digital doodads. More and more our digital devices are coming with features that allow us to create facsimiles of old fashioned analog technology. Call me, well, old fashioned, but I still prefer the real, clunky, prone-to-error analog originals. I was bummed out a while back when Polaroid announced that they were discontinuing the production of their film, thereby dooming their cameras to obsolescence. I’ve always loved Polaroid cameras. Unlike a digital camera which allows you to take a seemingly limitless number of images a Polaroid camera forces you to choose carefully. Is this something I really want to remember? You ask yourself that when you’ve paid ten dollars for a pack of film with only ten exposures in it. Of course the magic of a Polaroid is also that you have the photo in your hands immediately upon taking it. How many of us never even print our digital photos? I know that I sure don’t. Polaroids are not high definition, but in that way they are almost more like our own memories—a little blurry, not always easy to make out, but real and deeply felt.

I was very excited when I discovered last year that Polaroid was coming out with a new instant camera, the Polaroid 300. It takes vertical photographs instead of the more iconic square format. And while I miss the old film, I’m still having a great time getting to know my new camera. I gave it a test run on a trip out west to Grand Canyon, Zion and Arches National Parks. I took twenty exposures. I only ended up with six good photographs, but that was more than enough. How many photos are really necessary to remember something? Within a week I had my photos framed and mounted on the wall. They make me happy every day.

I like to write captions on my images, but I don’t really love my own handwriting. So I’ve decided to plop them in a typewriter instead. The limited space for writing really makes me feel like I’m writing a short, short story or a haiku length poem. It adds another layer of fun to the experience.

So I hope you enjoy Real Polaroid Fridays. See you next week.

Philip