Tuesday 23 March 2010

Instant development.

These days, I feel like drawing. More than drawing, really, I want to just freeze the images in my head. They're Polaroids, these images, with a thin white border and white space at the bottom to write on. Pity they don't make Polaroid film anymore. A quick and easy capture of a perfect moment. Well, now of course you have the digital experience, but you have to admit, there's something about those borders and that white space that makes so many of us edit our photos to look like Polaroids, right?
The point is, it's freezing a happy moment. It's freezing happy people on the beach, wrestling. It's freezing natural, delighted smiles. I want to see those moments around me, and I want to click them, unobserved. I want to be those moments and have someone capture them. People aren't really candid when you stand around them with a camera, they're just naturally trained to strike poses, look pretty and then complain about how horrible they look in all their photos. This is what society has trained us to be. A pose, coy smile, hand on hip. Measured emotion. Whatever happened to wild glee?

Meanwhile, two of the buttons on my Fuji S7000 have suddenly stopped working, and so I'm stuck in black and white mode. Now I love monochrome, but sometimes, I really, REALLY need the colour, plus I'm not great at getting my contrast ratios right. So I need to get this fixed, and soon. I wanted to take this shot in colour, it was a beautiful (and goddamned delicious) Chocolate cake, a rich brown with gold ribbons.



One last paper tomorrow, and then I'm gone.

9 comments:

Espèra said...

The thing I liked about physical photos is that they are permanent. They may not be portable or easily accessed but you can touch them, feel them, run your hands over them and HAVE them. You won't accidentally delete them or lose them to a virus.
Digital ends my wait for the prints to come out and we can take as many photos as we want. But that also allows us to very quickly erase everything.

I haven't really used polaroid.

Sneha said...

True. Humans are trained to do a botched-up imitation of reality in photos.

I like the photos you post. I can't take pictures to save my life, so I admire anyone who does a good job :)

Jack said...

Mystique,

How did your French test go? Have nice holidays. Who's birthday was it?

Take care

Jack said...

Mystique,

I forgot, it is so nice to see old photographs and remember good old times.

Take care

Akshay said...

Now come on, I can't understand how people actually feel nostalgic about primitive photography. I might as well go back a little further back in time and say that nothing can match the austere beauty of cave paintings (although, well, I've never quite seen one in live experience).

Digital is best. Period.

scarlet pimpernel said...

I miss my polaroid camera days!

Mystique said...

@ Espera: I see your point well.

@ Sneha: Thank you. And yeah, I hate photo-posers. Though I do pose sometimes.

@ Jack: It was my brother in law's birthday.

@ Akshay: Not everyone embraces change like you do. I prefer books on paper to Ebooks. this is exactly like that.

@ Pimpernel: Never had a polaroid, always wanted one.

scarlet pimpernel said...

i had one when i was a kid.

polaroid people are reinventing themselves thesedays they have a new digital polaroid starting from 500 dollars. i tried every store in muscat to no avail, then i emailed the polarod company and they told me they are now selling only in us and europe

an omani in my office has an old polaroid ..hoping he will sell it to me eventulally , but i am skeptical about obtaining spares

The Unnecessary One said...

hey u posted this on my bday! haha, some coincidence