The Impossible Project blog: 8 exposures with....

me...

I was honoured to take part in a new feature on The Impossible Project's blog, 8 exposures with... I had to pick 8 photos for the piece, which can be seen above.

Check out the interview and photos and send them in your suggestions for other instant film fanatics you'd like to see dissected like this in public. As usual click on the photos to get launched into Flickr.

Roid Week is coming...

If you like Polaroids and you use Flickr, then you probably already know about Roid Week.

It's the most gloriously indulgent orgy of all things instant and it will probably drag me out of my entirely unplanned semi Flickr retirement hiatus thing. Some of my old Roid Week entries are in this Flickr set, but cos i'm shit at tagging I don't think i've found them all...

The feeding frenzy begins on the 11th and it's easy to get lost in the melee, but if you can keep up, or even just drop in, it's a chance to see just how beautiful this form of photography can be. Polaroid is certainly not dead, and with the continual evolution of The Impossible Project our early blind hope is being replaced with a kind of blissful assuredness over the future of our favourite medium.

It's curated by Cate and Gardengal. So give them some thanks.

Testing testing.

Here are my personal favourites ^ from using The Impossible Project's PX70 so far. They don't all really contain colour, but - to me at least - all have something very beautiful about them. I'm camera-lickingly excited for the future of these materials if those industrious chaps holed up in Enschede keep on the way they have been. I hope you all show them support by buying their films and giving them feedback.

~~All these photos have been posted to Flickr and Polanoid so just click on them to find them.

However, i've also taken some shots with the PX70 that just don't do it for me . And 'cos i'm stupidly vain I won't be posting them on the web anywhere else, so keep on scrolling to see what I mean. They're a bit lifeless, lacking in contrast and colour, and most importantly weren't very good photos to begin with. I reckon good advice early on is take shots of colourful subjects in good natural light with a normal exposure (that may seem obvious, but it's the last thing I normally do). Keep an eye on how they change over time and do let me know how you get on with this stuff when you first use it, won't you.

Click on these photos to make them bigger.


And DON'T FORGET. Send in your best PX70 shot to TIP by August 16th and become an official tester of the next versions of the film.

Time-lapse scan of PX70 Colorshade.

I've been lucky enough to get my grubby little hands on a couple of packs of text emulsions for PX70 - the amazing new colour film from the introverted geniuses (genii?) over at the Impossible Project. I've already started posting a few shots over at my Flickr and Polanoid, but I thought I'd give you a flavour of what to expect when you crack open the first shot.

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I thought this shot would be fucking great - as it turned out I was wrong, but hey ho.

So for anyone who gets off on technical nonsense this was a bright sunlit room in the late afternoon. Just as I felt it was compulsory to take a flower and horse shot with this stuff, so I thought I should aim the camera at myself, and apart from the obvious deficiencies with the photo itself - subject matter mainly - I was really concerned when I saw this massive marbling effect. So I scanned it after a few minutes, and thought i'd keep an eye on it - if it's any explanation it was late, i was bored... It soon became clear that the marble (or octopus skin as Jess Hibbard called it) fades and changes over time, which is all rather interesting.

ps// I was using an SX70 Sonar (with the Sonar turned off) if any of you are interested... No? Heathen.
I got quite excited by this point ^ because it looked like real colours were infecting the image. Previous to this i'd only found murky, but interesting, monochrome blues, which weren't really the best advert for a colour film... As we'll see in a later blog post it is possible to extract true colours from the PX70, it just seems a lot harder to do indoors and you're much more reliant on good natural light, which ironically was one of the main enemies of the early Silvershade PX100. The marble is blending in to the image by this point too you'll notice - probably 2 hours after taking the photo.

And fuck it. After about 6 hours the colours are gone again ^. I suppose the blues look like the classic SX70 Time Zero blues superficially.

And they are.
And this is very very hopeful.
But there's also a big difference at the moment.

Where TZ seems to give light to a picture, PX seems to take it away. But, comparing a brand new film to the greatest film ever made is a hideously unfair game even by my own high standards of unreasonableness.


And this is what it look like at 0925 on the 31st July 2010 ^ roughly 36 hours after taking it. You'll notice it's darker than it ever has been, with more interesting contrast too. Pale creams have replaced the colours that began to show. You'll also notice, strangeley, the marbling has stayed (to some extent). Strange because this is the only shot that shows marble artefacts long after being taken and if you go to my Flickr again you can see this in reality. There's also a smoothness to the shots I've put on Flickr so far that this photo doesn't have - but we should embrace these early variabilities.

What I particularly love about these prints is their glossiness. That might sound vulgar, but they're truly beautiful and for a bargain introductory price of ..... whatever it is for 3 packs you'd be mad not to snaffle some up and have a go.

There's also a chance to get a bulk load of PX70 to test by submitting your best shot. So get involved.

The lava rain.

Cornwall is blessed with some wonderful looking trees...and I just can't help myself.

Yet more experimentation with SX70 camera and PX100 film. I'm beginning to feel like it will always be an experiment with this stuff!

The first photo was exposed properly, protected from light (using a dark slide) and developed at the suggested temperature (roughly 17C). The second image wasn't protected from light immediately and was warmed on the stove of the van while developing. I don't think it's even a contest as to which is the more beautiful image; but maybe you'll let me know which one you prefer?

Click on the photos to get launched to Flickr.