Instant Love

A few weeks ago, on a random whim, I emailed my dad:

Dad,

Hi! How are you? Hope all is well. I was wondering, do you guys still have your old Polaroids from when I was a kid?

Love you,
Megan

Some context would be nice, I guess. A few months back, I read about the 365 Grateful project (you can watch a snippet of the documentary made about the project here) and was totally enthralled. I have always been a fan of instant photography, and as a now loyal journal writer, I thought it was a fabulous idea to add images to my written words. Over the past two years I’ve fallen in love all over again with the idea of film photography. We’re so obsessed with digital images, where you can take 100 shots to make sure you get the perfect capture, and I adore the idea of film’s imperfections. I love the blurry edges and the closed eyes and the unintentional overexposure. In fact, I spend so much time making my digital images look like they are film (um, hello, Instagram), that I thought it would be fun to try and take some actual film images as well.

Enter, these beauties! My dad found them in an old cabinet at my childhood home and brought them to me. I immediately looked for film online, only to find it’s grossly expensive. Polaroid closed it’s doors a few years back, and now you can only buy film via eBay or The Impossible Project. I love the idea of The Impossible Project (they bought an old Polaroid factory and have developed their own line of film to keep the medium going), so that’s where I purchased my first rolls. I get sixteen exposures….for $50. Holy crap.

The results so far have been less than stellar. I forgot how bright the Polaroids’ flashes are, so most of my indoor pictures are extremely blown out (and not in the good way). I’m still working on finding a focus point as well, so I have a lot of out of focus subjects. The Impossible Project film is very sensitive to light, so you have to immediately cover up your image as it comes out of the camera or it will be ruined. I’ve been laying mine down flat (per instructions), but that has seemed to cause some crazy blue lines across my images. I’m hoping I will keep getting better, but the cost of film is so much, I’m not sure how much I can waste getting it all right.

I suppose that’s the point though…my images will never be perfect. And that is why they are wonderful. Their imperfections are what makes them beautiful. At least, that’s what I’m choosing to tell myself today, as I pull out the credit card and order some more film. Onward!