What I’m sharing today is a bit different than what I’ve shared thus far on this site: I’m sharing my summer project that documented my family’s activities on Instant Film.\u00a0 Thanks to my BelAir Instant Back my wonderful wife purchased for me in late June, I’ve had the pleasure of blending the two greatest loves of my life: my family and analog photography.<\/p>\n
What I want Obscura Works to become is not only a chronicle of my work in alt-pro and historical photographic processes but also a discussion of my approach to photography – whether it’s serious fine art photography or capturing my daily world in a different way.\u00a0 What’s so often challenging for a fine art photographer is finding that balance between being serious about your real work while still remaining focused on “play” – that exploration and creativity that gives birth to our best ideas.\u00a0 The experience of “play” is what first brought us to photography and it should continue to be nurtured throughout your career at regular intervals.\u00a0 Without it, our focus narrows too much, our passion turns bitter and we dig ourselves a rut we have little chance of venturing out of.\u00a0 Play is essential.<\/p>\n
Digital records of my family and I are far too prevalent – my iPhone is filled to the brim with videos and pictures while my Canon 5D’s CF card is regularly dumped onto my desktop, full of hundreds of files documenting everything from a fun family lunch to an exciting hike in the Talkeetna Mountains.\u00a0 Summarily, these images are forgotten, only occasionally pulled out of the nebulous depths of my hard drive during my biyearly spring cleaning.\u00a0 Those moments are treasured but their records don’t hold the meaning I want them to.\u00a0 The tangibility of prints isn’t even the issue, as printing them out still separates them from the moment by days, months or even years.<\/p>\n
Polaroids, however, hold a special place in my heart – these tangible records of the actual moment are actual artifacts *of* that particular moment.\u00a0 Most of my childhood is documented in Polaroid, as it was not only the most accessible and simpliest camera for my mother for many years of my life.\u00a0 All school functions, daily activities, parties and trips, in some way, were documented with a Polaroid.\u00a0 I still treasure those images to this day, as each image is like a childhood mile marker.<\/p>\n
I decided to turn my lens on my own family and document them similarly – and what I found is that I’ve stared at these tangible images for hours since taking them – I’ve carried them to work and shown them off – I’ve kept them in my car as a reminder to take more – and I, without a doubt, treasure these moments more than any others captured in years past.\u00a0 These prints represent how successful our summer was – while having only digital records before made me reflect on how many opportunities were lost.<\/p>\n
Many have pined for Fairbanks’ lost summer, ruined by record-breaking rains – and certainly, I could choose to focus on that myself – but these Polaroids make me realize exactly how many great moments we did have in this brief, yet exciting, summer.<\/p>\n
*Note for every nit-picky photographer out there: Yes – these images were taken with Fujifilm’s Instant Film – *not* an actual Polaroid.*<\/p>\n
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What I’m sharing today is a bit different than what I’ve shared thus far on this site: I’m sharing my summer project that documented my family’s activities on Instant Film.\u00a0 Thanks to my BelAir Instant Back my wonderful wife purchased… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,7,19,18],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aidan","tag-alt-pro","tag-belair","tag-family","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/img088.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/obscura-works.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}