polaroid

52 Rolls Week 10: Polaroid Lifts. Sort of. /  by Jacqui Booth

It’s all got a bit manic here and I’m making some mistakes with my film choices.  Lots of them.  Basically I’m using whatever comes my way…which means that often I can’t get the processing done.  I need a batch of colour chemicals for 120 film – but I don’t drive and postage rates are high so they might as well be on the moon.

SO.  Keep it simple – do some polaroids on some expired film and lift em…job done.  I even watched a tutorial.

What follows is a how NOT to polaroid lift.

First of all, the pics turned out okay – praps a bit greyish blue, as the film is expired as usual to keep costs down, but better than last time.  I had pictures.

So – I looked at the tutorial closely, with squinty eyes and everything – my, that water looked nice and warm.  So very hot water was used.

By the end of the first evening I’d breathed in a lot of chemicals, peeled some layers and poked them around with a paintbrush, then chased my etherial gel like pictures round a developing tray or two, caught them on some different types of paper, hung them up in the garage and gone to bed feeling like quite a happy lassy.

Fortunately, the garage door was locked with the key in the morning so I couldn’t check them before I went out.  I can’t unlock the bloody thing myself, so it wasn’t until the evening that I discovered that all four of them had DIED in the night.

An anguished tweet was issued.

The next night I did nothing.

BUT – this thing has to be done.  So, I pulled up my big girl pants and thought really hard about how I could mess around with the pics without actually killing them.

This time, it seems prudent to do a ‘before’shot.

The crazy decorative edging was peeled off, and then what was left was popped into some warm water.  This meant I could peel off the black square that makes the backing.  I might have done this a little early…here’s another Leicester beauty spot!

And, as threatened, another photo of the new Little Bird SOS studio that we’ve been settling in to this last couple of weeks…well, mostly.  My bedroom is FULL OF WOOL, as is the dining room table.  Oops.

Anyway, for the last two Polaroids (below) I just kept the backing on and took off the fiddly silver strips.  Welcome to Polaroid half assed peels.  They’re scanned on black paper so you can imagine what they look like a little better.  I had a brief escape to the moors just South of Hebden Bridge as the House Mamil wanted to do a crazy bike ride.  The kids and I tagged along so I could navigate my first solo grown up hike.  Okay, that’s cheating really as one of my offspring is bigger than me and just as good with a map, but hey – we still got a bit lost.  If it wasn’t for my compass we’d still be there (I stupidly didn’t listen to the nice hippy wizard man who stopped for a chat).  This lack of navigational prowess/listening to good advice is worrying as the lanky offspring is away for the weekend soon to do his Duke of Edinburgh award.  Hmm.  At least I know he’s very calm in the face of being really quite lost and gradually sinking deeper and deeper into a marsh.

I rather liked some of the leftover backing papers too!

And that’s it.  I’m not entirely sure I’m going to be visiting this again in a hurry, but you never know!


This blog was first published on 52rolls.net

52 Rolls Week 8: Fuji Instax. Abandoned office and a new beginning. /  by Jacqui Booth

I’m losing my way a bit here, but bear with me.  I knew there’d be glitches.

So – time to call in the Instax.  And a lunchtime trip to an abandoned office with the house mamil.  Fortunately,  I consider this perhaps more of a treat than a ribbon wrapped box from Pandora.  I think.  Okay, I’ve never actually experienced that but I’m pretty sure that half an hour spent with oddly itchy legs, carefully seeking out solid bits of floor whilst hoping nothing disturbed the falling in ceiling at that very moment is much much more the thing for me.

I’ve got mixed feelings about ‘urban exploring’, ‘ruin porn’ and that whole shebang but this was fun.  The water had poured through the roof, bringing down the false ceiling and great clods of insulation which let the light flood in, so it appeared to be illuminated.  I picked my way over loose parquet floor (which I figured must have been laid on a solid foundation) and felt a little better when I deduced that the pile of poo on a block of foam definitely wasn’t human.  I didn’t much fancy opening the door at the back of the office though…

The outdoor shots, still taken on auto, were over exposed.  I rather liked the mossy carpet at the back of the building and temporarily developed a strange infatuation with a tree that had grown in a rather tiny enclosed concrete square where the building didn’t quite tessellate.  Plucky little tree.

And then – to my amusement – I experienced that age old problem.  Two shots to take before the end of the ‘roll’.  So, the camera popped out in the rain to visit our new Little Bird SOS studio space.  It’s just on the edge of Leicester so we’ll get to gaze upon the National Space Centre from the balcony.  Expect to see a lot more of this scene, though hopefully slightly less grey!

And then it was time to have stab at parenting.  This photo is from my (brave) spot on The Teenager’s bed as I threw forward bits of design based help I’m sure he didn’t really need.  We’ve often spoken of the importance of taking photos of the ordinary and the lack of record of my teenage bedroom, which was some distance from ordinary and now only exists in folklore. Think Joe Orton’s/Kenneth Halliwell’s room crossed with the trappings of a teenage goth and you’re about there. For some strange reason my parents saw fit to obliterate it when I left.

Z keeps a much less alarming room, even though he’s inherited my noticeboard and doodlings.  I’ve just noticed that’s one of the first film shots I took and printed over his PC.  Aww.  Anyway, he’d actually asked me to take a proper picture to document his room so we’ll call this flash assisted effort a test shot.

NB.  I do not have a cat to waste my last frames on.  Well, I do – but I’ll need to dig her up.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net

52 Rolls Week 6: Polaroid. Various Failures /  by Jacqui Booth

First of all it’s late.  I bought the wrong Polaroid film from the Impossible Project people.  They have very kindly offered me a refund so when I’m feeling a little more confident I’ll try to order the right film.

I also excitedly bought a Macro Polaroid off eBay…only to find that there’s a third format of Polaroid film I needed to know about and everyone knew this except me.  Ah well.  Learning is good, right?

So, then him indoors offered me one of his expired Impossible project films for the house Polaroid (donated some time ago by Jo and Richard – thanks!) and I accepted as they’re normally pretty much okay, handed over the cash, and here’s the results.

Good eh?

I finally got three shots out by figuring that they didn’t like one iota of light between their ejection into the atmosphere and them hastily being shoved into a dark box, so these last three were clamped to the bottom of the camera the moment they were spewed out.

Not a resounding success, but given the circumstances I think I’ll settle and go read a book.

This blog was first published on 52rolls.net