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April 26, 2018 · 9:11 pm

Instaxography

the Instax 200 – instaxographers weapon of choice

Instaxography (copyright) is my latest hobby of the week, for this week, until the film pack is gone that is. I picked this baby up at a thrift shop complete with the batteries, several shots left on the pack, and a new pack of 10 pictures, for cheap – about what the film pack costs. I knew I had to have it after I took a test picture of the clerk in the store who showed it to me. They keep these under glass, like gold jewelry, and you must request a showing. They don’t wear white gloves however, which spoils the entire effect. However, it brings me back to the days of Polaroidography (copyright that too) and my old SX70. I thought the film was expensive 35 years ago! Holy crap! Today…. don’t ask! But Fuji is cheaper, and just about as bad as Polaroid was, so why not?

the bay bridge (not THE Bay Bridge – our Bay Street Bridge)

While out for a bike ride we stopped beneath the bridge and I also did a watercolour sketch.

Looking the other way we have a lovely barge and a lot of water and sky, but Instaxography gives it a very artistic feel, don’t you think? Ugly can be beautiful.

Anyhow, I’m not finished this experiment yet, and I have to say it is still a sort of thrill to watch and wait for the image to appear as if by magic. My Dad had a Polaroid, I had a Polaroid, and recently I sent my son in Germany – a Polaroid! I hope the film is cheaper there. If not he can get himself a Instax, or just forget the whole thing. But one day, I know his genes will express themselves and he will take up instant photography, if only now and then. It’s in our blood! Also, I took Polaroids of the babies… you gotta love that.

a day in the life of a blog

Some days I just want to make some marks with a typewriter, if only to justify the collection. Typing is like therapy in a strange way, you press the keys and a physical reaction occurs, leaving you with a mark on paper. It is a feedback loop of sorts, direct, simple, immediate. And it has the added benefit of being quite capable of creating something you can read, criticize, laugh at, enjoy, loath and keep for along long time (almost forever). Typing is like Polaroid photography! My old Professor of Architectural History wrote a book in which he proposed a number of different analogies as ways to interpret the history of architecture. Polaroids didn’t come into that, but had they done so I’m sure my father would have understood; he was a big Polaroid fan and had a number of Polaroid cameras, starting with the original, and ending with the SX 70. His pictures, which were many, were all of what I mention here; laughable, pitifully bad sometimes, yet a reminder of a day or an event that would last and last. Unfortunately all those photos seem to have vanished! So much for posterity. But still, the possibility exists, and that itself makes Polaroids, and typewritten pages different from other ways of recording moments in time…

A blog is like typing and like Polaroids, is it not? You can just sit down and post something, and there it is as a record of a moment in time. How long it might endure is anyone’s guess however. But I do have a shoe box full of the typewritten bits I’ve posted here over the past years, should some future person wish to read them and be amused, or bored..

SOME PHOTOS, C/W THOUGHTS: