Your Courageous Life

When Susannah was in San Francisco a short while ago, she had a meetup at the SFMOMA cafe, and I was heading into San Francisco that night to meet my students for our semesterly “Class night at the museum” at the SFMOMA, so I went in a bit early.

I had never given much thought to Polaroid photography. Actually, I confess I didn’t actually think it was an art form–I was under the mistaken impression that you can’t really control much with a Polaroid and that the good shots are simply a matter of luck. After looking at her gorgeous photographs and hearing her talk about manipulating Polaroid cameras, I had that feeling–that “I want to do that” feeling–and promptly began looking into getting a camera off of eBay. But before I did that, I put a notice out on Facebook that I was interested in finding a Polaroid in case anyone had one they were interested in just chucking, and within minutes Julia, writer extraordinaire and my new Patron Polaroid Saint, said I could come pick up her old 600 Land Camera, as it was collecting dust.

Cue the hunt for film, which I finally did find–at $25 a pack (and there are only ten shots in that pack…)!

And now I have taken my first shots and find that I really love the quiet grace of a Polaroid shot. There is something that I respond to when I hold a Polaroid in my hands. I don’t know how to explain it, except to say that there is something palpable about it. I keep looking at the photographs again and again, inspecting them, just enjoying the looking.

Now let me shift just a bit into what I’ve been thinking about, ever since taking on a type of photography that will cost $2.50 per photograph, with the fore-knowledge that much of what I do will be a flub, because the best advice I ever heard about becoming a good photographer is “Take lots of pictures.”

I am a photographer–I’ve been doing portrait sessions since 2006. I am the kind of photographer that a certain sect of photographers really hates–the self-taught photographer. Really, there is a certain sect of people in every art form that hates self-taught types. There are artists who disdain of any artist who didn’t go to art school. There are musicians who think any musician who didn’t start out with a solid foundation in classical training is a hack. There are writers who disdain of anyone who hasn’t studied under some established writer  (though oddly with writing, there is a lot of moaning and complaining about how all writing programs do is produce crappy writers and that “real” writers don’t need writing programs because “real” writers just write–with the help of a mentor, because to go it solely alone would hint at arrogance).

I began experimenting with photography before I ever knew what an F-stop was or what ISO meant. I did it quietly, without really sharing what I did because I didn’t think I was a “real” photographer. I bought a Canon Rebel that took 35mm film. An awful boyfriend had his brother sell the camera to me used for $250, claiming it was a deal, and I was such a naive thing that I took him at his word and then my mouth dropped open in shock when I saw the same camera at Target, brand-new, for the same price (sigh).

It was when I graduated to the Canon Digital Rebel XTi that I actually began to learn a thing or two about photography. The digital age has allowed me to teach myself a lot that I wasn’t able to teach myself when time delays made it necessary to wait to see what certain camera settings would produce. With a digital, I could set the camera to a certain setting, take pictures, see how that turned out, tweak it, take more, notice what made a difference–all without spending a ton of money.

More than anything, being able to play with a digital camera taught me a lot because I was able to make mistakes. Unlike when I was a kid and had a little Vivitar 110 camera and had to save up my allowance to buy or develop the film, using the digital has given me the freedom to play and experiment to my heart’s content.

The Polaroid, by contrast, is such an expensive camera to operate that my first time out with it I noticed that I was reigning myself in–hesitating to take pictures for fear that they would turn out badly and I’d waste $2.50 on a bad shot.

And then I thought, “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

I’ve been reading a lot more about the left and right brain lately–inspired by Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind,” which I taught to one of my English classes this past semester. I’ve been thinking about how hitting the continuous shutter button on my Digital Rebel is so about going with a moment, not thinking, just diving right in and seeing what comes up–a much more right-brained experience. Using my 35mm Blackbird Fly or the Holga or even my Dad’s old Voigtlander Vitoret, and now the Polaroid, I take much more care in sizing up a shot. Especially with the Polaroid–who wants to spend $2.50 for a shot and get a blurry mess? I mean, that’s my latte budget we’re cutting into.

But from the perspective of craft, I can see how having some arenas where some outside influence causes me to go into a different mode than the one that I usually exist in, one that reigns in my excesses and gets me to carefully consider a move, can be a good one. When practicing the piano, one always starts slowly and then works their way up. You start slowly because otherwise you will practice mistakes in, which is to mean: your muscle memory will retain certain patterns that are incorrect, and you want to slowly train your muscle memory to reach for the right notes, and then build speed from there. Maybe there is some similar element for photography (one that I don’t know about since I didn’t go to school for photography). Maybe there is something about how I size up shots or evaluate lighting that I’ll notice and then integrate into what I do when I go back into the free form of continuous shutter on the digital.

I would really like to hunt down the Polaroid SX-70 land camera. If you have one floating around your attic or basement and don’t want it, please do contact me. Even if it’s broken, I’ll give it a try and see what happens.

And if you’re interested, I’m watching The Impossible Project closely, and recently got a tip about Rollip.com from O Magazine.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 6:00 am |