Filed under: Experimental, Photography, film, polaroid by ramune

Crystal Castles – Magic Spells

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I’ve been editing digital photos like they are going out of style, so I took a break to scan some of my recent Impossible Project Polaroids taken with my (sister’s) SX-70 camera. This little triptych is from my adventures in picking figs off my mother’s fig tree, which is exploding with deliciously beautiful fruit this year (and every year). The cardinals and the wasps love them too, so they need to be picked pretty much every day this time of year to ensure they don’t get overripe on the tree. Plans for this year’s crop include fig ice cream (made by me) and fig chutney (made by my mother). Mmm . . . I can’t wait! In the meantime I will eat them fresh.

Note: As with the rest of the photos on my blog, you can click it to see it larger.

Filed under: Experimental, film by ramune

Beach Fossils – Youth

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Here are two more photos from my experiments with the Fade to Black film from The Impossible Project. Unlike the last two Fade to Black polaroids I posted, I stopped the development on these two photos of peonies around 3-5 minutes after I shot them (a week apart). The first photo was shot inside and the second was shot outside. After I finish this set of Fade to Black film, I am going to see if there is anything I can do about the rollers that are leaving the stripes across the photos.

Filed under: Experimental, Photography, film by ramune

Broken Bells – Mongrel Heart

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A few weeks back my sister brought down her (beautifully designed) Polaroid SX-70 camera for us to play with. She bought it at a thrift store for $5 years ago and now if you try to find one on ebay it will cost over $100 (and over $300 new). I imagine this is partly due to The Impossible Project, an interesting group that saved the last Polaroid production plant (in the Netherlands) and has been recreating Polaroid film from scratch. Some of their first batches are a bit quirky but they seem to be refining their process.

When my sister first brought the camera down, we tried out their PX 100 Silver Shade film. I haven’t scanned those photos yet, but they were a mixed bunch. Since we had one of the first batches of this film, the backing was a bit leaky. Supposedly they have figured that out and are fixing it for the next batch.

This last time she came down, we played with the Fade to Black film, which I was really excited experiment with. So far I have only taken a few photos with it, but the basic idea is that the film turns completely black within 24 hours after you take the photo, unless you remove the backing and stop the process. I imagined it would be a gradual process, however after taking these two photos, we noticed the film went almost black within an hour or so. Both of these photos of the polaroids were taken around 5-10 minutes into the development. Supposedly if you let them go completely black and then leave them in a sunny place for a few weeks, part of the image will come back. Depending on how they tun out, I might post those results.

P.S. Please excuse (what we think are) the roller marks on the photos. They seem to show up more in some photos and less in others. Maybe that’s why the camera only cost $5.

Filed under: Experimental, Photography by ramune

Plaid – Twin Home

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I took these double exposed photos over the course of a couple months during the summer/autumn of 2009, but I only just got the roll developed last week. I first shot the roll on my Olympus OM-2n and then shot over it with my lomography fisheye camera (at the farmers market). I wasn’t particularly thrilled with most of the roll (there’s only so many tomatoes overlapping country scenes I can take), but I do really like how these two came out.

Filed under: Enamel, Experimental, Jewelry by ramune

The other week I had my last enamels class of the summer (sadness). Because the summer session is so short, I didn’t have any grand plans for anything, but wanted to play around with a wee bit of metal forming and making earrings. I started off this particular pendant wanting it to have a nice gradient of transparent red to gray. Unfortunately while I had it in the kiln, I managed to overfire the red (this is easy to do with reds) and it became a disgusting opaque vomitous brown. I was pretty upset because before this accident the red was really quite lovely and I destroyed it so quickly. After that unfortunate moment I decided I had nothing to lose, so I intentionally continued to overfire it until it was obvious nothing else would change. It was still an object unpleasing to the eye, so I put it under the torch (weeee!). To my pleasant surprise, putting a torch to enamels in the right way gives even the most foul of colors a metallic pearlescent sheen. After playing around with this a bit I decided the piece was finally done and acceptable. This is nothing I would have intentionally created, but sometimes it’s fun to mess up and then play around with the piece until you get something else completely.

Filed under: Collaboration, Experimental, Photography by ramune

Back in November or December Scott gave me a roll of film to start a double exposure collaboration, the idea being that I would shoot the full roll, rewind it and give it back to him to shoot over. I wanted to try something a bit different, so I put the roll in my lomo fisheye, hoping that it would create an interesting result. I gave the roll back to Scott in early January and he shot over it with his Konica. He then scanned and cut them how he thought they looked best. Here are a few of my favorites and the rest can be seen here. Some of them turned out pretty well and others were not as exciting.

If you have a film camera and have any interest in doing a double exposure collaboration, let me know, I would love to do more.