I love instagram; i hate myself.

So, yesterday I got an iphone. Succumbing to the masses and whatnot. It seemed almost inevitable. Almost instantly I downloaded several apps for the camera, including Instagr.am.

Ugh. I love it. I've always hated apps which promise to give a "vintage" feel to your photos. Maintaining that if you want a vintage photo, buy an older camera and film. Commit. Stop faking. But this way is so much easier.

Recently I've tried to buy polaroid film and just flat out could not afford to do so. I used to be able to buy fairly cheap film on ebay, but the price has gone up significantly over the past few years. Now it seems to work out at around £3 per exposure. I should have realised this would happen given the closure of polaroid's instant film plants in 2008.

We have to be thankful for The Impossible Project of course, for saving the last instant film plant and making new film available.

Impossible prevents more than 300,000,000 perfectly functioning Polaroid cameras from becoming obsolete, changes the world of photography and keeps variety, tangibility and analogue creativity and possibilities alive.

However, I still find their film to be more expensive than I was once used to. I will occasionally be able to purchase the film, it makes shooting with it a much more precious process knowing that there are very limited chances to get a good shot.

Lisa Wiseman, a San Francisco based commercial photographer used to working with polaroid film, shot a project titled "The New Polaroid" solely using her iphone camera.

This project is shot completely with my iPhone and is an exploration of iPhone as the new Polaroid. As the iPhone is becoming a ubiquitous and trendy accessory, on-the-go picture taking is now the norm. I see people using their iPhones to take spontaneous photos in the same carefree way that cheap Polaroid has been used in the past. In concept and ideology, the iPhone mimics Polaroid; however, it pushes the aesthetic forward by utilizing a new non-film (but technologically infantile) medium. Just like traditional Polaroids had a specific size and unique look, iPhone photos are unmistakable because the technology limits them to a fixed size and resolution and imbues them with a unique chromatic aberration that says “iPhone” and nothing else.

I do not consider iphone to be a substitute for instant film. The one aspect of instant photography that makes it so appealing is the physical aspect. Watching the image appear before your eyes and then having the physical object as a reminder of that moment forever. Ugh, I hate the way this sounds. I just want to get across the importance of the physical. Being able to hold a photograph that you have just taken. Digital photography does not exist. It isn't a real thing. Its just a series of codes within a machine.

Then again, how do we share photographs nowadays? Generally there is no physical contact between people. I would assume most photographs are viewed alone, online. On Facebook, or something similar. (of course, I cannot speak for everyone, worldwide. But this is the norm for my friends and family.) In that case, in order to share instant film photographs with the same amount of people you would share digital photographs with you have to scan the images into the computer and upload them in the normal way.

Now the physical images have become but a series of codes. Does it even matter that the existed in the first place?

I am not a photographer

[Times Square, New York. November 2010]

I carry a small digital camera with me at all times (because it is also my phone) which allows me to photograph anything that interests me throughout my day. These photos are never really thought about. The light source, focus and composition are never calculated. Partially because digital advancements in photography mean that the camera automatically considers most of these factors for me. Also, partially because I see these images as throw-away. If a photo is bad, I can delete it and take another. But usually I won't because they wont be used for any real purpose anyway, they are only a form of self documentation. Almost like a personal log of what I have been doing, what I have seen.

I bought my first polaroid camera about four years ago. Frustrated by the fact that all the photographs taken by me, my friends and family were shot on digital cameras. Once shot, destined only to be uploaded to the computer and most likely forgotten about. Generally only ever shared via use of a social networking site (I do think this is a wonderful technological advancement revolutionising the way people interact with each other, however there is also something terribly cold and impersonal about it). Due to the generation which I had grown up in, I was generally unfamiliar with any sort of camera other than digital, which has been designed and evolved (and continues to evolve) in an aim to eradicate imperfection. The majority of cameras available to the general public all have automatic features which allow even the most inexperienced user to take perfect photos at the press of a button. Through taking photos with an instant polaroid camera I was suddenly thrilled to be stuck with the flaws of an imperfect photograph!

On the first day I took my camera out to experiment with, a friend and I went to a well-known Aberdeen park. It was fairly late in the afternoon and the sun was low in the winter sky. I considered the scene carefully, looked through the viewfinder and positioned the composition carefully so a leafless tree was positioned nicely on the far right hand side of the frame. As a small boy on a bike rode across the grassy square I hastened delay and pulled down the shutter for the first ever time.

The next few minutes were filled with giddy excitement. I had researched effectively and knew to carefully place the undeveloped photograph into my warm pocket and leave it for a few minutes until it had reached full development. (This small time period of pure anticipation has never ceased to be exciting with each photograph I have taken since.) After a short walk to the next potential photograph location it was time to reach back into my pocket and uncover my creation.

I was instantly mesmerised with the results. The photograph was broken down into a trio of vertical rectangles of varying saturation depending on their proximity to the sun. The entire photograph had a washed out pinkish tinge, nothing like the green and blue scene in front of us. Silhouettes of the boy and the tree were tethered to the earth with long, stretched out, black shadows. The tree had a white bullet-wound through it due to the reflection of the sun against the lens. It was of its own creation. Everything about the photograph told us that it had been taken by some sort of machine. Something that cannot comprehend the power of nature, and must break it down accordingly, in the only way it knew how.

This is perhaps what I love about instant photography. It doesn't lie about what it sees. It can only interpret the scene so far and immediately spits out its findings. Of course with time you begin to understand what sort of light sources will have which effects but some of my first photographs are still some of my favourites, particularly the ones from that day. You can only calculate the input so far, then you have to let intuition take over. And then probably, the machine will disregard your intuition and do what it wants anyway.

As soon as the machine spits out that photograph, you are burdened with an object. It is not just an image, a representation of something else, but it is a physical object in its own right. Of course you can then reproduce this image and upload it to your preferred social networking site, treating it as just another image documenting an aspect of real life. But you can never get away from the fact that it started as an object and ultimately will always be its own object with its own purpose.

I don't take polaroid photographs very often. Of course, its very expensive to take them in frequency, having to hunt out old film on ebay (When I first began buying this product, the price usually worked at around £1 per exposure, however nowadays its more likely to be £2-£3.) I tend you use it only when sightseeing abroad, or very occasionally at special events. Putting the money aspect aside, I take into account that whatever is photographed becomes final. It becomes a sacred object. Therefore I am more likely to consider the importance of the image I am about to take. Is it something I am going to want to remember always? Is it something I'm going to take great pride in passing around a group of friends. Is it something I'm going to want to present proudly in my home?

Digital images are disposable. Take a picture, you don't like it, delete it immediately and try again. You can take any number of photographs of the same scene in aim for perfection and none of them become remarkable, due to the shear accessibility of them. Images that are less doctored, less patently crafted and that are more naively formed instantly demand more attention. Instant photography may be a dying art form but for these reasons I am safely assured that it is going to stick around for a long time to come.

new camera

Apart from not really.

Bought this from ebay last summer.
This is the first and only photo I've taken using it.
You can tell from the photo that I don't really know how to use it.

The other polaroid cameras I have used have only had the sliding light/dark control, close up lens on/off and flash on/off controls. Here we have autofocus and self-timer. Insanity! I have no idea what the musical note means. Googling; commence.

I really like that one of the previous owners has marked their initials on the top.

David Eric Harrison
Diane Elizabeth Hardy
Daniel Edward Hall
Deborah Elaine Henderson
Demitri Eugene Harvey
Deirdre Edna Huckleberry?

new york

So this is all I can currently muster of my recent trip to The Americas, despite there being way much more to muster.

Coney Island was my favourite. More on that later. Perhaps.

My sleep pattern has screwed itself up in the opposite direction from before. The time is currently 6.20am and I have yet to sleep.

I have however now managed to make sense of those essay topics. Feeling marginally well put together now.

I plan to make good use of studio time in a couple of hours (perhaps post-nap).

I'm craving canvas and wood.

The process and repetition of constructing a stretcher.

Then the ever-enduring aroma of turpentine.

Having horrible, grubby fingernails for weeks.

Its been too long.