Self-Isolation, Day 49: Metal Roses
Self-Isolation, Day 49: Metal Roses
"Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real."
- Ansel Adams
Self-Isolation, Day 48: Lovely Things
Self-Isolation, Day 48: Lovely Things
"Some days, you just get lucky… Other days you wait patiently for luck to happen."
— Destin Sparks
Self-Isolation, Day 47: May
Self-Isolation, Day 47: May
"The two most engaging powers of a photograph are to make new things familiar and familiar things new."
— William Thackeray
Self-Isolation, Day 46: Oddities
Self-Isolation, Day 46: Oddities
"My love of photography is melded with the ability to capture what I want to remember in the moment I want to never forget."
— Devin Dygert
Self-Isolation, Day 45: Another Cloudy Day
Self-Isolation, Day 45: Another Cloudy Day
"The eye should learn to listen before it looks."
— Robert Frank
Self-Isolation, Day 44: Anxious
Self-Isolation, Day 44: Anxious
"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography, everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."
— David Bailey
Self-Isolation, Day 43: Lazy
Self-Isolation, Day 43: Lazy
"Photography is an itch that won't go away. No matter how much you scratch it."
— Dara McGrath
Self-Isolation, Day 42: In the Shadows
Self-Isolation, Day 42: In the Shadows
"The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the viewer."
— Steven Pinker
Self-Isolation, Day 41: Used to Be
Self-Isolation, Day 41: Used to Be
"I take the same picture twice. First, with my heart, then camera."
— Biju Karakkonam
Self-Isolation, Day 40: Fancy
Self-Isolation, Day 40: Fancy
"Do not take pictures to please the public; the photo should be spontaneous and free."
— Betty Poluk
Self-Isolation, Day 39: Half-Set Table
Self-Isolation, Day 39: Half-Set Table
"When a moment in front of me appears to be particularly special, whether it be by beauty or experience, I capture it. I usually find a reason to justify taking that photo - symmetry, or color or contrast - and it's my hope that my photography sheds light onto what I see and do on a daily basis."
— Connor Franta
Self-Isolation, Day 38: Everything's Coming Up Roses
Self-Isolation, Day 38: Everything's Comin' Up Roses
"God creates the beauty. My camera and I are a witness."
— Mark Denman
Self-Isolation, Day 37: I Am
Self-Isolation, Day 37: I Am
"When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!"
— Ted Grant
Self-Isolation, Day 36: Change
Self-Isolation, Day 36: Change
"A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away."
— Eudora Welty
Self-Isolation, Day 35: Dark
Self-Isolation, Day 34: Dark
"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept."
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
Self-Isolation, Day 34: Bright
Self-Isolation, Day 34: Bright
"Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography."
— George Eastman
Self-Isolation, Day 33: Beating Around the Blueberry Bush
Self-Isolation, Day 33: Beating Around the Blueberry Bush
"Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world."
- Arnold Newman
Self-Isolation, Day 32: Strange Things
Self-Isolation, Day 32: Strange Things
So, I am choosing to forgo a quote for today in favor of catching up with you all.
First, wherever you are in the world, I hope you are doing well. I have been keeping myself busy watching new shows (I just started Cheers) and playing various Nintendo games (Animal Crossing for the win, obviously).
Second, today’s photos, as you may have gathered, did not come out the way I intended. The color one is simply overexposed, and the black-and-white film expired in January of last year (for the record, the color film is expired as well, but, in my experience, the color chemistry holds up better than the black-and-white, at least in older formulations). My initial reaction to the first image was frustration at myself for not exposing it properly (this is one where I probably should have bumped the exposure all the way down or not used the flash, though I haven’t had many good experiences forgoing the flash), and I decided to break my own rules about redoing images and to give it a second chance, albeit in greyscale instead of color; I was, again, frustrated to see that the second image came out looking less-than-desirable. The more I looked at the two images, the more I came to realize that this very thing is what drew me to shooting Polaroids in the first place.
One thing about the process of shooting instant film is that it can be unpredictable. You don’t always nail the exposures, no matter how long you’ve been shooting, and you can’t always know what the film itself is going to do. Every time you put a pack of film into the camera, you’re taking a chance: you’re chancing a bad battery in the cartridge, you’re chancing bad emulsion, you’re chancing accidentally setting the exposure meter up too high or too low, and the list goes on. When I first started shooting, all of this was exciting to me; I didn’t care about “bad” exposures or “bad” packs of film, because that added to the fun of making photographs. The dream-like effects of things such as bad exposure or half-missing emulsion added to the image instead of taking away from it, because, if these images represent memory, time, and the reality that I live in, doesn’t it stand to reason that there should be inconsistencies between the images? After all, memories get blurry, and there are parts that fade away altogether; we never remember things exactly as they were, and some are even pure fiction that exist only in our minds.
Reality right now is strange. It feels as though we’re living in a strange science fiction film — or, as many of my friends have heard me refer to it, a weird Sigourney Weaver movie — instead of in the “real” world (whatever the word “real” means to you — as I have learned, reality is different for everyone — but that’s a topic for another day). Reality is also, much like Polaroid photography, imperfect and unpredictable. The truth is that we never know what’s coming or the impact it will have, but we have no choice but to embrace it, learn from it, and move on, carrying with us the lessons we learned as a result.
To close, this week has been frustrating. I have found myself getting angry over things that I usually don’t think twice about, and that includes the images I shot today. But, once I got over the flickering moment of anger and frustration, I took a second look, and realized that neither of the images were as bad as I had first thought, and that, even though they aren’t perfect, they are still interesting in their own right. Sure, I could have followed my first instinct, which was to chalk these images up to loss and start again, but that did not seem a fair thing to do. For one thing, it is a distinct probability that most, if not all of the images in the black-and-white pack that I have in my camera right now will come out flawed in some way or another, and, given the nature of this project, it would be incredibly stupid and wasteful to shoot until I get the perfect image for the day, because that is not what my work is about. My work is about embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly of everyday life, and showing it to others in hopes that they will find it at least a little bit relatable. Today, I broke my own rule — I tried for a do-over, and it didn’t work out. I tried to make something perfect, but nothing in life is ever perfect — if it were, what would be the fun in living?
Thank you all for sticking with me, and a big thank-you if you read through today’s post. Tomorrow, I will get back to my one-image-with-a-quote-of-the-day posts. I’ll see you then.
Self-Isolation, Day 31: Shakedown
Self-Isolation, Day 31: Shakedown
"My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only begin to imagine."
— Lois Greenfield
Self-Isolation, Day 30: Welcome Signs
Self-Isolation, Day 30: Welcome Signs
"In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people.”
— James Wilson