Instant Photography

Inspired by several artsy-creative friends and colleagues — including James Tinnelly and Alex Fourier — plus the discovery with my children of a big stack of old Polaroids of friends and family, I caught the instant-photography bug! Oh, I’ve got it bad…

Why instant-photography? Well, it’s definitely NOT because I want to harm the environment (I’ll recycle everything) and NOT because I’m turning away from digital photography. It’s just that Digital is more about making the “capture” and editing your images afterward, which is great for everyday snaps and street photography, or studio/commercial work.

I find the “non-digital-one-chance-to-compose-and-crop-in-the-viewfinder” approach of instant photography to be more a process of “making a picture” (as Ansel Adams said) than just taking one. And, of course, I’m visually, artistically drawn to the Polaroid-instant-analog film look-and-feel: softness, vignettes, light-leaks, aberrations, and colors. Oh, and those beautiful disasters when instant film gets jammed in the camera on the way out are awesome!