Hey Now

... little paintings, little works of art.

So they always say don't do it, but I always did.

I would pop up with my Polaroid One-Step and snap goes the flash! The click and the whirl of gears and out it comes, a little off-white square. Then I would shake it! They told you not to, but I always still did. The professional photographer next to me with the real camera once said, "You know, you don't have to do that." What?" "Shake it like that....."

But I would always do it- if you shake it hard enough the bottom seam would bleed cracks of other colors. It looked cool, then I would scratch them with the but end of a Sharpie cap and it would turn colors.... cool. I would deface and write on them. They became little paintings, little works of art. Cool.

News that Polaroid would discontinue manufacturing film was met with fear, anger and sadness by many. The Polaroid Camera would soon be extinct. I read a great article on the AIGA website that tells the story of Polaroid (Gone in Sixty Seconds June 10, 2008) and their inevitable demise. There is quite a movement to Save the Polaroid and it's lifestyle!

So when I was going through the very messy flat files I kept coming across lots of Polaroids. The are from various times in the past and events to be remembered. They include snapshots from the last night Ray Flynn's Golden Dollar Bar was open on April 3, 1999, and some from an Xmas in our Main Street loft that same year. There are a few from the rubble that was Flynn's the day they flattened a classic Buffalo drinking hole on my Birthday the Summer of '99. I have bits of the ceramic 'Golden Dollar' from the front sign in my garden.

I thought these snapshots were great, so I scanned a bunch of these little paintings and put up this gallery for you to view. I love my Nikon digital camera- I shoot many shots, delete the crappy ones on the spot, download them onto the laptop, organize them in iPhoto, and print them to already cut 4 x 6 photos sheets, full bleed. Easy... but so was pushing a button and watching the photo come out before your eyes..... Goodbye Polaroid.

POLAROID GALLERY- Found Snapshots (June 30, 2008)- click me!