i want a polaroid camera

Polaroid cameras almost completely faded into non-existence with the advent of the digital camera, but surprisingly enough, they are making a comeback in some of the off-beat artistic photography. Actually for some people, Polaroid never left. I had a Polaroid taken of me at a restaurant in Taiwan—a place where they liked to hang customer photos on the wall. I was amazed at seeing a Polaroid camera still being used and thrilled at seeing the photo develop right then and there. The last Polaroid I appeared in featured a cardboard cut out of Ronald Reagan (current President at the time) in front of the National Air and Space Museum.

I found a spectacular stop motion animation on youtube made from 987 Polaroid frames, shot with a Canon camera without any computer manipulation.



I like how Process Enacted (above) is a meta-movie: a movie about making the movie itself. This reminds me, I have yet to see Adaptation, which is supposedly a movie about making the movie Adaptation. It brings me back to some of my undergraduate computer science classes where we talked about reflection: when a program examines and modifies itself while it is running. (Computer science is really more about philosophy than it is about science—more on that in my next post.)

If anyone wants to unload a 1970s-era Polaroid SX-70, 1980s-era SLR 780, or an 1990s-era SLR 690 camera, let me know! Oh and despite the song telling you to "shake it like a Polaroid picture," don't shake your Polaroid pictures :)