It's Roid Week! (Friday)

Untitled, a photo by Hilary (curioush) on Flickr.

Roid Week is a celebration of instant film, on Flickr. See all about it (and other people's photos) here.

This photo was taken on S. Jefferson Ave. in south St. Louis.

I used a Holga camera with a Polaroid back (affectionately known as a Holgaroid), with Polaroid Type 89 pack film (which is no longer made and past its expiration date by a few years, so I keep my last few remaining packs in the fridge for special occasions, like Roid Week!)

It's Roid Week! (Thursday)

Untitled, a photo by Hilary (curioush) on Flickr.

Roid Week is a celebration of instant film, on Flickr. See all about it (and other people's photos) here.

This is the last remaining location of Globe Drugs in St. Louis. Globe Drugs — for the uninitiated — is part pharmacy, part wine/spirits store, and (I would say) mostly variety store.

There are so so so many things there, at low low prices. What's in stock changes frequently. Expect the unexpected, for sure. Go check it out!

This photo is a Polaroid transfer. I took the photo with my regular digital camera, printed the photo, and then exposed the image to Polaroid Type 669 pack film (which is no longer made and past its expiration date by a few years, so I keep my last few remaining packs in the fridge for special occasions, like Roid Week!)

After the image is exposed to the pack film, the negative is separated from the positive, and the negative is printed onto something else (in this case, watercolor paper).

It's Roid Week! (Tuesday)

Untitled, a photo by Hilary (curioush) on Flickr.

Roid Week is a celebration of instant film, on Flickr. See all about it (and other people's photos) here.

This photo was taken on S. Jefferson Ave. in south St. Louis.

I used a Holga camera with a Polaroid back (affectionately known as a Holgaroid), with Polaroid Type 89 pack film (which is no longer made and past its expiration date by a few years, so I keep my last few remaining packs in the fridge for special occasions, like Roid Week!)

It's Roid Week! (Monday)

Untitled, a photo by Hilary (curioush) on Flickr.

Roid Week is a celebration of instant film, on Flickr. See all about it (and other people's photos) here.

This photo was taken on Chippewa Ave. in south St. Louis, not far from my house.

I used a Holga camera with a Polaroid back (affectionately known as a Holgaroid), with Polaroid Type 89 pack film (which is no longer made and past its expiration date by a few years, so I keep my last few remaining packs in the fridge for special occasions, like Roid Week!)

Village Chippewa

Untitled, a photo by Hilary (curioush) on Flickr.

St. Louis, Missouri, USA
shot with a Holgaroid

"Right this instant" event this Sunday at Urban Eats

Yesterday I knocked over what seemed like an entire bucket of salsa in my refrigerator—what a great opportunity to clean out the fridge! (Sometimes I need a little salsa crisis to spur me into action.)

What worried me the most about this was the stockpile of Polaroid film I've got chillin' like Bob Dylan in there.

Polaroid Corporation stopped manufacturing film several years ago, so as each type that I use was being phased out, I bought up as much as I could. I try to save it mostly for things that I know will be well-suited for the medium—some of the colors of one type really lend themselves to intense skies, for instance. And type 669 is used for Polaroid transfers (see example above. See more about the process here.)

I think I got the Polaroid boxes cleaned up quickly enough that there will be no lasting salsa scars, but I was a little wistful when I saw how small my pile of Polaroid film is getting. It won't last forever, even in the refrigerator, so I put some of it to use recently in preparation for my current show at Urban Eats, "Right this instant." I've got traditional Polaroid photos in the show, as well as Polaroid transfers and emulsion lifts, and Holgaroids, photos made with a Holga camera with a Polaroid back.

The show is hanging up throughout May, and I'll be at Urban Eats this Sunday, May 23, from 11:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Come say "hi"! (There will be food and drinks for sale in the cafe. And while you're at it, see work from Angie Griffith, Naomi Silver, Thomas Shepherd and the PPRC Photography Project. You can download a flyer with more information on all the artists here.)

Hope to see you Sunday!

Urban Eats Cafe (enter Urban Arts Collective through the cafe)

3301 Meramec St (at Virginia)

St Louis, MO 63118

PS. There is a company that is trying to revive some Polaroid film. Learn more about it here.

'Roid Week + 'Roid Month

Over the weekend I put up my new show at Urban Eats, "Right this instant," which features images I've made with Polaroid film.

You might have heard that Polaroid film has been discontinued. It has been, for the most part, although Fuji still manufactures some instant film, and there is a new project that is bringing back some of the integral Polaroid films.

Unfortunately there don't seem to be any plans to revive Type 89 film, which was just about my favorite. Its vivid colors are a great match for the wacky Holga camera—when they're paired together there's no telling what they'll come up with. The photo above was taken with my Holgaroid (as the Frankenstein-ish combination of the Holga with a Polaroid back is affectionately known.) I've got a little bit of the film left, stored in my fridge a vault under heavy surveillance.

I only get it out for special projects now, onaccounta I don't have much left. When I decided to do the Urban Eats shows, I knew I had to get a photo of this building with the Holgaroid. I pass it every day on my way to work and always mean to snap a photo. It's so so so blue. Finally on a day that the skies were looking extra sky-ish I remembered to pack the Holgaroid and took this.

It was hanging in Urban Eats in my last show ("Sign Language") and it's still there (although not in a starring role) for the May show. 

Anyway.

We are in the midst of 'Roid Week 2010. This is an unofficial celebration of Polaroid film on Flickr (and elsewhere? not sure), so I'm busting out some recent Polaroids, which are on my mind due to working with them a lot in the past few weeks for "Right this instant."

My artist's reception for "Right this instant" is Sunday, May 23, 11:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m.  Come grab a bite to eat and say hi!

The value of using the good stuff

You know what's fun?  Making Polaroid transfers.  In a nutshell, it involves taking a photo (or copying another image) using Polaroid peel-apart film.  And then prematurely separating the negative and positive of the Polaroid and using the negative of the Polaroid film to transfer the image onto another surface.  Many people use watercolor paper as the transfer surface.

I'm enchanted with the process, but it takes a number of different steps and there are variables -- wet or dry paper, how warm to keep the paper while it's developing, how much time to allow the film to develop before separating it, etc.  I've experimented with a lot of different ways of doing things and it's always educational, even if I don't get something I like.

A few months ago I was out of watercolor paper, so I bought a different type of paper from what I had used previously.  It was sort of environmentally friendly paper, which was a plus.

So a few weeks ago I got out all my Polaroid-transfer-making equipment to make a batch of transfers and ack!  Everything I got was awful awful awful.  This made me a little sad because no matter what variables I experimented with, they all looked terrible.  Such as this guy:

Then I got a notice that a local art supply store was having a sale on Arches watercolor paper, which is sort of the gold standard of watercolor paper.  It's beautifully made and has been made beautifully for something ridiculous like 600 years and it's what I'd been using prior to my other watercolor paper experiment.

That's more like it.

To learn more about the Polaroid transfer process, check out this entry on AlternativePhotography.  Relatedly, see (terrific) local photographer Jane Linders's post about making Polaroid emulsion lifts here.

(For more Polaroid transfers, see Tiffany Teske's amazing work here.)

Meet the new boss

Originally uploaded by Hilary (curioush)

I bought this guy last weekend off of Craigslist. Earlier in the week I bought the Polaroid SX-70 off of Craigslist that I used to take this photo of the Canon.

This all started with this photo of my grandpa feeding my dad.

A few weeks ago I was back-and-forthing with my friend Darren on Facebook and he asked about this photo and what a great look it had and we got into a photography discussion and it reminded me that I really want to learn to develop film before the opportunity passes me by.

I sort of came to photography from the wrong direction. Or the right direction. My direction. Anyway, I started with a digital camera and then began to shoot a little film in a Holga and then picked up Polaroids and have a few other film cameras but I've never really learned the fundamentals of photography. Someday I'd like to have a little darkroom but first I need to learn how to develop film.

I see that there are classes in film development at the community college. So I needed to get a camera that would be worth shooting with. I've always liked the looks of this Canon, the AE-1. It's just so handsome.

I've been vaguely poking around eBay and elsewhere for a while, thinking maybe I'd pick one up someday. Conversations with Darren and the community college course schedule arriving in my mailbox just about collided with me getting a tax refund in the mail. Most of that is more than spoken for, but I took a little bit and bought this camera and the SX-70 last week. I got terrific deals on both and I am so so happy about that.

I've been cracking open photography books and magazines, which is a change because my heart's not been in the learning and reading for a little while here and I'm feeling reinvigorated and excited about photography in a way that I've been missing for a bit.

Polaroids

Originally uploaded by Hilary (curioush)

I took this in my kitchen the other day. With a Polaroid SX-70. A wonderful camera. I only picked one up a while after Polaroid discontinued its film, unfortunately.

You can use (the fairly common) 600 film in it, but it takes a bit of adjustment, and it still lacks the qualities of the original film. And now that Polaroid has discontinued all film production, 600 is becoming harder to find.

Good news for Polaroid may be on the horizon. There are reports that integral* film may come back into production, if The Impossible Project comes to fruition. Yay!



* e.g., 600, SX-70. The kind that the camera spits out in one piece. The "shake it like a Polaroid picture" kind. Pack film -- the two-part kind used in Holgaroids and for Polaroid transfers and emulsion lifts -- is still a goner. For now, at least.