Polaroids! Polaroids! Polaroids! That’s what I have on the mind these days.
I’m staring at my old Spectra SE Polaroid Camera right now (a gift from my Uncle Mike to my Mom and passed onto me). It’s fast approaching the one year anniversary of the death of Polaroid film. Each taken frame brings the medium closer to extinction so I’ve been hesitant to shoot what little film I have left.
Back during my days at Calarts I was inseparable from my Spectra camera. I spent what little money I had on film, eating ramen twice a day for weeks on end while treasuring my Polaroids. Below are two of two of my favorite photos from those days of glory.
I was rescued from my instant-camera blues by this recent post by Cindylu. Her Poladroid images sent me scurrying over to http://www.poladroid.net/download.html to download the Poladroid application (Mac only as of this writing but the site says a PC version is in the works). Poladroid is a simple drag and drop application that allows you to create facsimile polaroids using your own image files. Amazingly you can change the image’s density and color temperature by “shaking it”. Some of the other features are a little ambiguous because there’s no English language instructions yet. I’ve been experimenting with it lately and I’ve been, if nothing else, very entertained seeing how I some of my favorite photos look as Poladroids. Below are some of the results.
The format of all the images created by Poladroid is based on Polaroid 600 film. The program’s official site says a Poladroid Pro application is in the works and I’m hoping that the Spectra format will be an option. If anyone else has experimented with Poladroid please send me a link to your images, I’m curious to see what people are doing with it!
Peace n’ Polaroids,
Rio
Graphic Art, Tortillas, Comics, and Troublemaking 