I was cleaning up a little on friday when I cam across one of my polaroid tins. You see we ship prints, cd’s and such in these snazzy tin containers,

but when one of them is dented or otherwise not fit to send to a client it gets delegated to ride around in my camera bag protecting polaroids on photowanders. So I found one of these the other day & to my surprise there was a whack of polaroids in it that I have never scanned in to share.

So here I am now sharing them with you! :)

Bridal falls

Where I got turned around on the Coquihalla because of crappy tires and lots of snow.

I think were the last of some Polaroid Type 80 Pack film that I had. Shot on the Mamiya RB67 With I am guessing a 90mm lens for the first one and a 50mm lens for the second.  I am quite amazed at how much these faded since I took them in November. I had to bring a lot of contrast  back when I scanned them in because they were nearly faded right out to grey in spots.

So I have come up with what can only be considered to be a brilliant Idea for a photo project! I am thinking about doing a whole series of photos with captions double exposed onto the film. These are some of my tests that I fired up tonight with a the Mamiya RB67 & a Polaroid back. I took a photo and then double exposed the photo with another photo of the quote or caption. I used white writing on an otherwise black monitor for the captions.

This first photo is technically triple exposed because the photo of the bridge was from when I was there earlier this winter. (I often leave my self a photo to double expose later but this one I forgot about so there is a hint of an exposure of a cello in this one as well which explains the caption) but I was super happy with this result.

While this is a super cheesey quote I found it a bit fitting for the photo. This is one of our good packs of Polaroid Chocolate film!

I am thinking about shooting a random roll of quotes for our film workshop this weekend and the double exposing the roll on the photowalk. In-fact this would be a great thing to do with some online photo friends! Who want to trade a roll or two of random words to shoot with out know what is on the roll or what it may say?

I am super excited today for all sorts of reasons.  I meet with a new model today that I am excited to work with her, I have shoots lined up this week and next with all sorts of exciting ideas floating about. I have five rolls of film awesome that will be ready to be picked up in an hour or two! I have a mostly free day tomorrow (as long as I get my shit together today) and Cypress has gotten a fresh 15cm of snow in the last 24 hours on top of the 15-20cm it got over the weekend.  The dot com of for the bands website came available, and I was able to snag it.  The Zoom H4 is super awesome in many ways, and I was feed a chocolate croissant this morning by the ever awesome Tracy. So ya super excited!!

It may also have something to do with the chocolate and the 3 (working on the 4th) ridiculously large coffee’s that I have already had while being out and about as well as the better part of a pot that I drank at home, but I am choosing to disregard that all and just be excited for the sake of excitement.
Even hanging out in a truck on Broadway for an hour while M meets with some of her cult members and the fact that I have a tonne of work to do today can do nothing to ruin my excitement!
In fact even the fact that the rewind motor on the EOS 3 bit the dust on Friday when it jammed while rewinding some redscale can do little to temper my mood (: I am off to Burnaby after all the Kool-Aid had been drunk over here to hit the other lab, but then it is all about the working for me!! I did pick up some other random film when I was dropping of Friday awesomeness and discovered that a few of my midnight Mamiya x-pro selfies worked out kinda awesome.  I am so excited to see what comes of the Tungsten film xpro that I took on Friday.

So what started out as a quick ‘lets blast off a roll of film and see how it will cross process’ turned into an epic evening of self-portraits and general dicking about. I am setting up to do a old camera film fashion shoot this Friday and I am trying new ways of cross processing out in preparation. There is a roll of 120 film to go with these as well, but of course that will have to wait till it comes back from the lab.

I have a thing with kitchens I don’t know why I just do. The photo never works quite the way I want it to. But every once in a while I try it.

There is no rhyme or reason behind me shooting at my truck other then that was were my tripod was. There is absolutely nothing to say about the headphones other then I was in the mood. They were not plugged in to anything they just seemed like a good prop.

Here is a quad Cam shot of how I saw things really.

All right, I will take Miranda to her cult meeting and have a nap I think or perhaps stay awake and see what happens. I did plan to hit the mountain today for a bit so we will see if that works out.  I also have jam with most of the band tonight and I am super excited about that!!

Now because I obviously have heaps of time and absolutely no work to do I figured I would poke around and see what the rumor mill has to say about this whole polapremium business. What I have to say is that people initially seem to be about as skeptical as I am at first.  That is not to say that there aren’t a few metric tonnes of hope floating about out there.  Near as I can decipher from random rumors, and peeps in the know dropping hints, is that Polaroid and Unsaleable.com have teamed up to release a last run of instant films.  Rumor is saying that a release of a type 600 and possibly a replacement film for the SX70′s (that is not to say that they are releasing time zero again, my guess would be that they are releasing a type 600 that either has a built in ND filter or is a slower film closer to time zero’s ISO 150). It does seem however that the focus is going to be on the continuation of the integral films (non peel apart films) with little to no mention of pack films.

The British Journal of Photography recently published that Unsaleable.com (who is indirectly the registered owner of polapremium.com btw) was able to convince Polaroid to “produce an outstanding amount of breathtaking film, before closing down their factories”  “Many of these films are completely new products, never produced before” – spokesperson for polapremium.com

This is all super awesome except I am concerned that this is going to be nothing more then a short term run of Polaroid films that will quickly run out and within a year we will be left where we are right now. I also worry that the price is going to be an unbelievable ridiculous and arbitrary amount that would also make the long-term use of these films impractical for most, which is not unlike unsaleable to do.

What I hope to see is a return of square film formats like the type 87 or 84 because all my pack film cameras (with the exception of my land camera of course) shoot square leaving a black edge on the photo.  I would like the Polaroid to be the finished product but that stupid black edge is so ugly.  It gets to the point that I don’t shoot Polaroid with my Mamiya or Holga anymore (other than for the very few precious remaining boxes of type 84/87 I have left in my fridge).

One other possible bit of good news, that I am hoping is true, is that Polaroid may have licensed out production of type 664 and 667 films to Fuji.  The 664 I don’t really care about but in my humble opinion the 667 is a far superior Black & White then the Fuji FP 3000B.  In fact the 667 is the only medium format Polaroid brand pack film that I am sad to see go. I would also love to see the large format 8X10 etc.. come back but here I know that I am dreaming! :)

In my humble opinion what Polaroid should have done is stopped shipping date sensitive product to every Wal-Mart, London Drugs, and small town photo store in the world, and instead moved to an entire mail/internet ordering system.  Condensed the entire instant film section of the company down to their two remaining factories and have two shipping departments and a kick ass website/online presence.  Instead of having a large bloated company with sales offices all over the bloody world doing god knows what, streamline the whole thing down to the bear necessities.  It is not like the bulk of us die-hard Polaroid users haven’t been internet ordering our precious film for the last couple of years as it is.  I don’t claim to know how it all works but I will be shooting film/Polaroid till it becomes too expensive to do so. The dificulty is I am super cheap, and this sorta work makes me absolutely no money, so I fear that day is too quickly approaching.

…how am I ever going to go to cuba!

Really I do!! So I am waiting for a package filled with new (well used but new to me) camera goodies to arrive via UPS, I get up this morning and I refresh the tracking page to see this :|

THE RECEIVER DID NOT HAVE FUNDS AVAILABLE ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT.
A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE

I am like umm….. and after confirming with Miranda that I didn’t turn the UPS guy away in my sleep, I have to say that I am glad that whomever they did try to deliver the package to didn’t have any money!

Much phoning and yelling has yet to materialize my package, but I am hopeful that it will get delivered to someone! Josh was kind enough to provide me with this comic that expresses everything I am feeling right now in a nice succinct nutshell.

Update!! They (UPS) have informed me that the driver will be trying again in 10min! I will try and see where the package nearly ended up :)

Update!! The UPS guy came and fumbled around a lie that was part way between “That is just what I wrote down” and “I tried this morning and there was no answer!” OHHHhhhhh so angry with them!

In happier news M is now the proud owner of a Mamiya RB67! I got her a matching camera (I won’t allow matching clothing but a matching camera that’s ok!) because she has half a fridge full of Chocolate Polaroid film! She thinks that it really is a bowling ball with the name Homer! But it isn’t really! I am removing barriers to her creativeness! Oh well it came and it is fun.

and they are both for sale!

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: 4.5
Shutter: 1/60
Lens: Mamya 90mm
Film: Polaroid 690 Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: 4.5
Shutter: 1/30
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

A Polaroid of this fish cooler type things near Westham Island.

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: ?
Shutter: ?
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

A Polaroid of a shed in the Ladner Delta area.

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: ?
Shutter: ?
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

I had some errands to run to day so I packed along my Mamiya and I found this on my scooter!

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: 32
Shutter: 1/250th
Lens: Mamya 90mm
Film: Polaroid 87 Pack Film
ISO: 3000
Date Taken: Sept.24.2007

Yup its the time of year in which large piles of pumpkins acumulate all over Delta! We were there today and i took this polaroid

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: 3.8
Shutter: 1/30
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007