lemons & lemonade

When they say there's no such thing as a wasted polaroid, this is what they're talking about.




600 smudge


(Very expired 600 film in polaroid extreme)

These were the first two pictures to come out of the wonderfully expired pack of 600 film I found in one of my new cameras. The pics got stuck in the rollers of the polaroid extreme and so the chemicals failed to spread. I kinda smushed them out with my fingers while they were still soft creating this pattern. I'll definitely do something amazing with these pics, but I haven't decided what yet.




film meets battery acid


(Before: very old Polaroid 88 film)


(After: Polaroid 88 with acrylic paint)

A while back I bought this Colorpack 80, it turned out to be in a sorry state and I never got it to work. One good thing came out of it, though, the camera happened to have a film pack inside with two shots left. It was very old and battery acid had leaked all over it, but I popped it in my EE100 Special anyway to see if it would work. What came out was two very faint pictures of a moped, but with a pretty shade of yellow and interesting edge patterns - my EE's leaky bellows also show. They've been lying around in a drawer ever since, but over the holidays I finally decided to do something about them. I went at them with acrylic paint, and I think they turned out pretty amazing (if I do say so myself).




dead pack




(Image film with hama beads)

What to do with a dead pack? I decided to turn this one into a family of robots.



...and then I went all out with my mini Dymo.




grene


(The Impossible Project PX 70FF with marker)

Flash failure. Sometimes the perfectly balanced white frame seems way too restrictive, so I decided to flip this one 90 degrees to throw it off balance, and then I drew on some branches.






a halloween curse update


(The Impossible Project PX 70FF, polagram with marker)


(The Impossible Project PX 70FF, polagram with marker)

I had to do something about those overexposed polagrams from the Impossible Moment in Time on halloween (see further down the page). I took the idea from the skull masks I did earlier and went to work on the polaroids with a marker. They didn't turn out perfect, but I think they're fun - I especially like the skull and flower, it reminds me a little of day of the dead imagery.







TZ Artistic Fade to Black with mishap. Peeled (left & peeled, scratched and watercoloured (right)

Yes, it does suck when something goes wrong. The shot above was the very last of my very last pack of Fade to Black. TIP had already sold their final packs, so it sucked double when **something** went wrong as I peeled it. I thought the big blobs looked a little like flowers in a very strange garden, so I scratched out some stems and added a bit of watercolour.


The Impossible Project PX 600FF emulsion lift with scratches and krink

This is a shot of the inside of my camera bag (!!) I thought it had some kind of interesting tones so I decided to lift it to see what I could make of it. The lift ended up a more solid brown than I had expected, but a chemical residue gave it some interesting cracks which made it look a little like an old oil painting. I ended up scratching out a treasure map and adding random dots of red krink.


The Impossible Project PZ 600. Peeled (left) & emulsion lift with watercolours (right)

I'm afraid I can't blame this one on the camera or the film (I really wish I could) it's just a horribly composed shot of my cat. I lifted the emulsion and played with watercolours to fix the composition and contrast.

So what do these situations have in common? I stepped outside of my usual bounds and allowed myself to experiment. Why? Because I already lost the shot, so what was there to lose?! I suppose the results are interesting enough, but probably not really me. Nevertheless I'm happy to have tried it out, one more thing to cross off the list!






a halloween curse



Very, very late last night (1:59am to be exact) I was stumbling around in my darkened bathroom trying to make something cool for this month's Impossible Moment in Time. The theme was Death, so I had made these really cool skull masks for polagrams earlier, but nothing really worked and it quickly went from bad to worse... (The Impossible Project PX 70FF)



aaaAAARGHH! I was tired and frustrated and decided to give up and go to bed. (The Impossible Project PX 70FF)

This morning when I woke up the first thing I saw were all the masks taped to the bathroom wall, which looked mighty cool. I got out my Image 2 and...



this happened! The picture got stuck in the rollers several times - I even tried to pull it through by hand. When I finally managed to get the camera to spit it out my hands were completely covered with chemical gunk (don't even want to think about the insides of my poor camera). Definitely cursed! It's clear just by looking at the picture!! (The Impossible Project PZ 600)



I did finally manage to get a good one, though. (The Impossible Project PZ 600)








I set up this polagram carefully, arranging the two swallow buttons with layers of crumbled up tracing paper to create a cloud effect with different transparencies. Well... as you can see, the tracing paper-thing really didn't work - it sounded great, but... (The Impossible Project PX 600FF.)




So what to do? Well, why not draw on the clouds? And add a sun too, for good measure! I liked the way the sun came out, and the clouds on the right hand side of the picture, but I messed up the clouds on the left hand side a little, then messed them up even more trying to fix them. Hmm, I wasn't going to let it rest at this! (The Impossible Project PX 600FF with marker.)




So I decided to lift the emulsion and play with watercolours once again. I like the way it came out in the end, kind of naive and childlike (which is pretty much as far as my artistic abilities go when it comes to drawing). It's great, though, that the film gives you a few extra chances to get it right - especially when there's 8 shots to a pack and a pack costs €18+. (The Impossible Project PX 600FF, emulsion lift with watercolours.)








How I found out the shutter on my Image 2 had quit working. (The Impossible Project PZ 600 with Krink.)








I managed to tear and stretch these two pretty badly while peeling the polaroids. I was sure I had ruined them completely, but somehow the tattered appearance ended up adding to the motif. (The Impossible Project PX 100FF, emulsion lifts on watercolour paper.)

As a portrait, I was never crazy about this. I somehow caught the model, Christina, at a bad moment and it ended up a little like the kind of portrait your parents would frame and put on the wall. I decided to do an emulsion lift regardless and play around with it a little. In the end I took some inspiration in depictions of the Madonna shining with rays of divine light - particularly the simplified way its often interpreted by tattoo artists - and went to work with my watercolours. It's still not the greatest photograph, but now I think there's a certain sweetness to it. (Polaroid TZ Artistic Edge Cut, emulsion lift on watercolour paper with watercolours.)

This was supposed to be my submission to An Impossible Moment in Time for month 2. I had the perfect shot lined up, but the flash didn't fire. The theme was "change" - as in a change of plans this time around. (The Impossible Project PX 70FF w/ Molotov markers)



I'll be adding to this page continually.