Instant vs. Instant
Sunday, August 21, 2011 by Shutter Sisters 
Whip out a Polaroid camera and the children will come running. They will surround you and look at you and this strange camera you hold as if you are from another planet. And they will ask questions. Many, many questions. How old is that thing? How does it even work? Film? What do you mean, film? A few might tell you they've actually heard their parents talk about these cameras. But to most, the concept is brand new. To take a picture with a Polaroid SX-70 and watch the faces as the image quietly appears is to experience a special brand of magic.
Adults are often just as mystified. Pull out a Polaroid camera on any street in any city in the world and someone will stop you. Someone will want to talk to you about it. They will tell you they didn't know people still shot with Polaroids and didn't they stop making the film ages ago? Then they'll get all soft in the eyes when they tell you about the Polaroid camera they grew up using.
As a Polaroid photographer, I'm thoroughly charmed by these interactions. I really am. But every once in a while, there's a gap in the conversation. A few seconds, a pause. And I know what they want to ask, I know what they're thinking. Their bewilderment is practically palpable. Why bother with instant cameras when digital photography exists? In an age where there are phone apps that reproduce the general aesthetic of a Polaroid image in a couple of seconds, where does instant photography fit in? A digital camera in most every phone means that image sharing has never been more immediate. With apps likes instagram, I can take a picture with my iphone, choose from a variety of film-like filters and share the results immediately with the online world. How can instant photography compete with that? The answer is that it can't. It doesn't have to.
Because there's just no substitution for the real thing.
There's no sound like the zzzip and whirrr a Polaroid camera makes as it shoots a photograph out, there's no feeling like the one that comes as you hold that picture in the palm of your hand and watch as the image slowly appears. And, hard as they may try, they just can't reproduce what instant cameras and instant films do with color and light. This is not to say that I don't absolutely love my nikon DSLR. Or that I haven't (joyously) fallen down a sizable instagram rabbit hole myself. I wholeheartedly acknowledge that digital photography and iphoneography have pushed the medium in wildly exciting new directions. They're just not meant to completely replace all that has come before them. And in a world where technology seems to be pushing us all along at breakneck speed, I think we can't help but be drawn to things that force us to slow down.
When I shoot with my Polaroid camera, this is exactly what happens. I slow down. Ironically enough, the technology that so many originally associated with speed causes me to slow things down. When I look through the viewfinder of my Polaroid camera, I take my time, I think about what I'm shooting before I press that little red button. And as the camera spits the picture out, I hold my breath.
Image and words courtesy of our newest regular contributor here at Shutter Sisters Andrea Corrona Jenkins, also know as Hula from Hula Seventy. (crowd goes wild). We are giddy to have her here!
...........
In honor of Andrea and all things Poloroid (Hula's trueest passion) we are offering a giveaway today! A comlimentary registration to her soon-coming teahouse workshop! Instant Magic. Sounds dreamy, doesn't it?
Just comment here between now and Tuesday night (8/23 at midnight ESTP) with a warm welcome to Andrea to be entered to win. And feel free to share something you captured in an instant (with your camera of choice).
Reader Comments (42)
what i remember from my youth though is that we were always really disappointed with the results of our polaroids, they never lived up to our expectations, because we compared the colors and quality with the pictures we made with our expensive 35 mm cameras, and of course they fell short....
i think right now, with all the different ways to document what we see around us, and the different ways we look at (our) photographs, we can finally appreciate the specific qualities and possibilities that polaroid brings to photography
the same goes to analog photography in general, i think
next week i will get my dad' s olympus with all the lenses and i really look forward to returning to film photography, especially the fine grain black and white films....
for the unexpected moments that i absolutely want to capture i still love my iPhone' s hipstamatic app
yesterday i went to a dutch-indonesian country fair (pasar malam) and took some wonderful shots of some of the visitors
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61760618@N08/sets/72157627483224168/detail/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aviaryimages/6062637569/in/photostream
Happy to be able to find Hula here!
As far as that attention-getting "zzzip and whirrr," I wrote about one of my own Polaroid encounters here: http://instamaticgratification.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/278365/
I dearly wished I had an instant camera with me. People there are so used to being treated like they are zoo animals by tourists that they dislike having their picture taken. Why should they let you take their picture when they will never see you again and they will never see the picture you took again.
With an instant camera I could have taken all of the portraits I dreamed of. Sigh.
Instead I took pictures of my family.
http://whichwayishomeagain.blogspot.com/2011/08/home.html
http://instagr.am/p/K4PZy/?ref=nf
in heaven I say.
Her workshop sounds like so much fun!
congrats andrea!
x0