polaroids

“Lost Property” is a wonderful 5-minute animated short film by freelance animator …

Photojojo comes from humble beginnings as a newsletter for the photography community, but it is a humble newsletter no more. Since those days, it has evolved into one of the go-to resources for the latest trendy gear, gadgets and accessories, and today, they announced their expansion into yet another market: rentals.

Created by Polaroid in 1976, the 20x24-inch instant camera is one of the most unusual and massive pieces of photographic history you can get your hands on (if you're lucky enough... or have the dough). Fortunately for those of you who want to see the cam in action, photographer Chuck Close managed to do just that in a series of images for Vanity Fair's 20th Hollywood issue.

Since 2006, Brooklyn-based artist Patrick Winfield has been creating incredible photo collages by photographing and recreating scenes using a large number of individual instant photo prints. Some of his pieces are composed by more than over one hundred instant photos! Although his work mostly featured Polaroid films early on, Winfield branched out into other types as well (e.g. The Impossible Project instant films) after Polaroid bowed out of the industry.

While many photographers aim for technical perfection, photographer William Miller goes the opposite route. After "rescuing" an old and barely functional Polaroid SX-70 instant camera from a yard sale, he began taking advantage of its glitches by viewing the resulting photographs as abstract art. He states,

The camera sometimes spills out 2 pictures at a time and the film often gets stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling the images in unpredictable ways.

Over time I’ve figured out how to control and accentuate aspects of the camera’s flaws but the images themselves are always a surprise. Each one is determined by the idiosyncrasies of the film and the camera.

The images look like landscapes taken on strange alien planets. He has titled the project Ruined Polaroids.

"The People I've Met" is a project by photographer Krista Langley that involves one Polaroid camera and one question. Langley shoots portraits of her friends and family and asks them to write down the answer to the question "what would you do if you knew you could not fail?".

Next time you’re on vacation and find yourself without a camera, try checking the mini-bar in your hotel room.

Creating plexiglass clones of your Polaroid photos is a classy way of showing them off, but Lori Andrews' (aka the 10 cent designer) has an equally awesome method: she picked 154 of her favorite Polaroid pics and had them neatly framed under glass for her kitchen.

Here's a terrific "Doh! Why didn't I think of that?" idea shared by Flickr user Ralph Odenwälder in his photostream: create a set of matching Polaroid photographs for an awesome do-it-yourself memory card game that you can either give someone as a present or play yourself!