Santa Cruz Polaroids
Here are a few more Polaroids taken over the last few days.
I’ve been shooting these Polaroids lately anytime I’m shooting for myself. I’m not really sure where I’m going with them. They don’t really have a theme or pattern. I guess I’m just shooting Polaroid to shoot Polaroid while it’s still available because I like the look. I guess that’s good enough. My friend and assistant Emily say’s to “think of it as a journal..they are personal and it doesn’t need to be consistent. Photograph what you love when you shoot Polaroid and fuck worrying about the purpose.”
Weekend Polaroids
Some Polaroids from this weekend. More in the “Last Polaroid” section of my website.
Rickenbacker 330
I love guitars. If I could, I’d have a room full of them. Now, don’t take this to mean I play the guitar. I play a little, but I’m very bad. I can play bits and pieces of songs I like, but I don’t think there’s one song I could get although way through.
This weekend I decided to buy a Rickenbacker 330. I’ve wanted this guitar for a while. I can’t really explain what made me pull the trigger and buy one this weekend. I honestly hadn’t even thought about it in a long time and I certainly don’t have a need for a new guitar (I already have a nice Gretsch Hollow Body)… but as can happen when browsing the Internet, I ended up on a video of Dan Auerbach (whom I’ll be seeing in concert on the 13th at Bimbo’s) and he was playing what looks to be a vintage Rickenbacker 330 Rickenbacker 360/12C63. That seemed to be all the motivation I needed.
F&CK Digital Part 3
Here’s one more for the revival of film. The folks over at The Impossible Project are in the process of bringing back Polaroid film. Here’s to hoping they’ll have something like Type-55.
Head over to their website and show your support:
http://www.the-impossible-project.com/
F&CK Digital
There must be some kind of movement going on. It seems to me there is a digital backlash at the moment. Maybe not a full scale revolt, but it seems to me like a lot of photographers I know who had all but switched to digital are now shooting more film.
I know I started shooting film again about 6 months ago when I decided to buy an old Rolleiflex to carry around with me from time to time. Just this week I went ahead and bought a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II (for really cheap I might add… a barely used demo kit with lens & film back for only $850!!!). And, a little over a year ago I bought a 4×5 camera primarily to shoot Polaroid Type-55 (that idea unfortunately went out the door quickly with Polaroid film’s demise).
Now, I must confess that most of my film shooting will be for personal projects. I’ll sprinkle in some film shots on editorial shoots when budgets allow for both digital fees and film related expenses. For commercial projects, it’ll be digital for sure since the Art Directors usually like seeing what’s going on as we shoot. But, for the projects that actually mean something to me, I’ll likely be using one of my film cameras (not that my paying jobs don’t mean anything… but you know what I mean).
I just got done shooting an editorial assignment for Inc. magazine. I brought out my new RZ67 and shot film for the first time on an editorial shoot for quite some time. Having never used an RZ67 before I didn’t want to rely on it alone, so I got the primary shot out of the way with my digital system (Contax 645 w/ Phase One P25+). But once I did, I switched over to the RZ67 and had a bit more fun with it. It was nice shooting and not running back to a monitor every 10 shots or looking at the LCD on the back of the camera to see what we had.
This isn’t digital vs film quality debate. I’m not going to say one is of better quality than the other. I’m not shooting film again for quality reasons. They are just different. I shoot differently when shooting film. I like the way I shoot with film. I slow down and think about things more than I would with digital. And anything that can get me to think has to be good.
