meeting in a pinhole

I've been feeling overly digital recently so I bought this pinhole polaroid camera. It's very physical - it's plastic, photons, paper and chemistry. And I've resolutely refused to look up how to use it on the web. So I've been experimenting with it and taking loads of really bad pictures. Over-exposed, totally black, unappealingly blurry. But then yesterday I stumbled on a use I quite like. Lots of my work life at the moment is in chunks of about an hour, in cafes; mostly meetings with people. Or not meetings, chats. And inside, in the moody lighting you get in most cafes, getting a decently exposed picture takes about an hour. So I've been pulling out the thing that exposes the film, plonking the camera down on the table and letting it sit there during the whole duration of the visit. And I wouldn't say I've ended up with good pictures yet, but I get the sense that something interesting might happen soon.

This is the first one, about a 30 minute exposure, at Suburb in Covent Garden, chatting with James yesterday. (What a nice and interesting man.)

This is at The Breakfast Club this morning. about an hour chatting with Chris and about an hour typing on m'computer. You can it's ghostly echo and my ghostly hands. I think what I like about these things is they capture something of what a meeting's like. We arrive. We talk. We blah blah blah. And we're all a blur. All that's left when our clever ideas have moved on are the tables and the lights.

This is an hour's meeting with Alex West in Suburb, (elevenses) followed by some computer tapping. This reminded me that when you play with the non-digital you have to have some reverence for the stuff. I'd been writing on the back of the pictures and then just chucking them in my bag. And obviously some of the pen leaks through from one on to the other. Which spoils this one...

...and this one. This was another hour of typing and free wifi at Suburb. The blurriness comes from the bloke sitting next to me asking to look at the camera and waving it about a bit and me putting it back in a slightly different place to where it was originally.

This is me writing a presentation in Starbucks this afternoon. Writing a presentation. As Dan's pointed out, you can almost see the data coming out of the USB and firewire ports.

And this is me doing that presentation, about an hour later. Or rather it's the room I was doing the presentation too. One of those hotel, conference room places.

They're quite interesting aren't they? Not sure why, but I like them. No idea why the first one's blueish and the other's are greeny-yellow. Hopefully I'll get better at this.

Comments

[mark]

This is great stuff. I love the fact that it shows you work (process) as something dynamic and continuous (not to mention that is always interesting to be the fly on the wall of someone else's life).

[grumblemouse]

I like them a lot - there seems to be loads of motion blur yet there's no one in any of the pictures - reminds me of perhaps a scruffy Gregory Crewsdon. Eeiry but more eeiry because of the lack of people.

[Clay Parker Jones]

I don't think you need to get better. These are pretty sweet. And they're a great alternative to the flat world in point-and-shoot digital pictures.

[Ben]

Yeah. Nice.

[Marcus Brown]

really nice.

[Richard Buchanan]

Analogue Rocks!

Far from spoiling the picture, the writing on the back could be part of the art!

[matt]

Maybe the fact that you're doing long exposures means that the colour temperature of the lights in the room is having a bigger effect.

Were the lights in the first place mostly fluorescent (eg energy saving), and the other place traditional, because the first are bluer.

[Rob Mortimer]

Interesting. I love slr photos.

Just reading this article on Polaroid's branding and packaging recomended on Noisy Decent Graphics (i think)

http://giam.typepad.com/the_branding_of_polaroid_/

[sarah]

I've still maintained a preference for non-digital cameras. Digital is great for instant gratification, but there is nothing better than the depth allowed by developing your film and playing with your own photos. Great work!

[Cam Beck]

What a novel idea!

[rob]

Good stuff! Polaroid has weird reciprocity effects, so if it crosses a (time) threshold it will go from blue to yellow. That and the color temp of the lights.