From Out of the Darkness

Recently, I began shooting the last of my Time-Zero.  Polaroid photographers know just what a painful statement that is to make.  The film is rapidly becoming degraded, though, and any effort to save it at this point is only an opportunity for loss.  The last pack I shot had an expiration date of December 2006, meaning it was a fairly new pack of Time-Zero, and I had arranged to film these shots during their developing process with a fellow artist.  The initial shots I got from it were quite black and rose, and those are the shots from the pack that I’m including here.

To shoot this pack of film, I visited the home of an artist who is a musician, painter, and actor, who is very photographable and who had agreed to help me film the Polaroids.  Chad is the upright bass player for a Twin Cities band Hot Rod Hearse, and the painting in the second portrait is his own.

a portrait of a musician

portrait of an artist

It was enjoyable to photograph someone who was not part of my list of usual suspects for models (my daughter, my son, their playmates, or my friend Lindsay).  I liked the experience so much that I am thinking of beginning a project of photographing artists of all kinds in their natural environments.

Anyway, because we were filming the the Polaroids in their developing process, I wanted to do a few still life photos which would be simple and visually pleasing to watch develop.  We took a few objects from Chad’s shelves, beginning with a ballerina figuring presumably belonging to his wife and finishing up with an evil little gnome.

a dancer for sophie

another little dancer

evil little gnome

There were a few characteristically blue shots from this pack of Time-Zero, but I will include them in a separate blog entry, since they do not belong visually with these.

Thanks for Visiting,
Elinor
elinor@equivoquephoto.com
equivoquephoto
My Flickr Photostream

opalescence

I’ve been experimenting with ways to get color with which I can live from Artistic Time-Zero film.  Sometimes it takes more than just a little of this, that, or the other to get the Polas to develop into something I like.  This last batch of experiments rendered some results I love, in terms of color.

Here’s my favorite of the last set of experiments.  Traces from a past life…

Traces of a Past Life

Another portrait of one of my children…

My Artist & Dreamer

A Phalaenopsis (moth orchid)…

Opalescence

Opalescence, 2

Another portrait of my daughter…

Surfacing from Dreams

Thanks for taking the time to look,
Elinor
www.equivoquephoto.com
equivoque.etsy.com

Addictions and Obsessions

This winter has been very long.   I had been leaving to work in utter darkness each morning and returning home to greet dusk, but, yes, there is finally daylight when I get home from work at the end of the day!  Winter has made it  difficult to find opportunities to shoot.  Recently,  however, I bought a Phalaenopsis (a moth orchid)  as a prop to phot0graph in the late afternoon light in the kitchen.  I also cracked open a Magic Pack of Time-Zero given to me by a special friend in addition to a pack of 100 Chocolate film that I bought from Polapremium.  Shooting both types of film definitely brought a bit of levity back to my life, and the Choco turned out to be something I love.

The Chocolate Addiction: Composing with the Land camera, especially with a closeup attachment (as was done here) is not an easy thing.  There is a lot of parallex error, and it takes time and a considerable wastage of film to learn to compose with the mind’s eye rather than with the viewfinder.  Anyway, this 100 Chocolate film, with its rich contrast and lovely crackelure, has earned my affection along with my other favorite film types, Neopan and Time-Zero.  My newly acquired love of chocolate.

Child of Mine

Chocolate & Sunlight

Falling

The Obsession: I’ve been inclined towards nurturing my own obsessions throughout the course of my life.  I used to have a wild passion for orchids and owned and cared for hundreds of them!  Now they find their place in my life as occasional props for Polaroid photography.   Time-Zero film has been been the object of my affection for a long time now, though.  I hope I’m not like the fellow in Adaptation who says, “Fuck fish“.  I probably am, just a little, but I think my passion for photography is going to stick.

Sea Butterfly

Sea Butterflies

Obsession

Thanks for looking at my photographs,
Elinor

elinor@equivoquephoto.com
equivoquephoto
my etsy shop

We Play at Paste

We play at Paste –
Till qualified, for Pearl — Ms. Emily Dickinson

Ms Dickinson

I have loved the words and works of Ms. Dickinson since high school when I encountered the poem To make a prairie, but her words have never had such direct application to my life as last night when I began helping my daughter make jewelry.  Mind you, I do not know how to make jewelry.  My ten year daughter, however, desired to make necklaces, earrings, and so forth from glass beads.  She also wanted to open an Etsy Shop called Clementine’s Corner where she might eventually sell her creations (with me overseeing her shop, of course).  Knowing that my daughter’s goal was well within her artistic capabilities, I agreed.  In any case, I had already decided that I wanted to learn to make jewelry so that I might incorporate my Polaroid photography in those creations.  Last night we went to Michael’s to get some framing done and decided to look for beads there.  Oh, we contemplated the beautiful and expensive beads we saw there but eventually settled on an inexpensive kit that came equipped with most of the supplies we needed to begin.  We definitely need to play with paste before we graduate to pearl!

Things Get Strange: for the love of distortion & blur

Here is the continued story of the world as seen through plastic lenses…

Multiple exposures with the malfunctioning shutter of a Diana camera can render interesting results.

things get strange

More from the Diana camera…

floating venus

Vintage signage from Mankato, MN.   Holga with Ilford Delta 3200…

BOWL

Diana camera shot of a mausoleum door in the cemetery next door to the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth, MN.

the unknown

Diana camera shots from South Shore of Lake Superior in Wisconsin…

earth times three

holding up half the sky

No gratuitous umbrella shots here… It was raining, and my daughter was carrying her Hello Kitty umbrella with her.

a girl with her umbrella

Holga, Ilford Delta 32oo, and blizzard…

last days

Finally, through January 6th, if you buy one regularly priced item from my Etsy Shop, you’ll receive a gift print.  (This excludes the items in the New Year Specials section of my shop.)

The Dream Songs

While some photographers are dreaming of the next spec to be introduced to digital SLR technology, there are those who think the crappier the camera the better.  While that might be a bit of an exaggeration,  some of us do consider distortion, blur, light leaks, and vignetting to be features rather than qualities to be avoided in our photographs.  We are the lovers of toy cameras.

the dream song

Toy cameras are inexpensive cameras made mostly from plastic, often including even the lens.  The Diana camera has been around since the 1960s, whereas the Holga didn’t arrive on the scene until 1982.  There are many, many more types of toy cameras, but the two with which I have worked most often are the Diana camera and the Holga.  I actually prefer the Diana camera, and, among my Diana cameras, I even have my favorite, for each Diana camera is unique.

Though the name implies play, many artists are serious about low-fidelity photography.  A good online resource for you, if you are interested in working with toy cameras, is toycamera.com,  which is associated with Light Leaks Magazine.  There is also an annual Krappy Kamera contest and show at the Soho Photo Gallery.

This collection of my own toy camera work emphasizes dream and memory.  I made all of the photos with either the Diana camera or the Holga.  It’s not the season of the year that is important in the set but the way in which the photos yield to the suggestion of dream.

The two following photographs are double exposures taken with a Diana camera of my children at Lake Superior.

daughter of the sea

spirit selves

Walking out over the ice of Lake Superior…

a poem for one voice

visual disturbances

Shooting into light and mist with a Diana camera…

from light and mist

Winter dunes of Lake Superior shot with Holga…

the dreams of a stranger

Finally, I’m currently having a sale in my Etsy Shop.  The price for all the items in the sale items section have been reduced.  At least one photograph in that section is a toy camera shot.  If you don’t have an Etsy account for shopping, you can always contact me by email about purchases.

Elinor
elinor@equivoquephoto.com

The following 8″x12″ print on Kodak Endura professional paper is now listed 20 USD.

untitled portrait

Portraits, Film, and Light

In our home, photography is a fact of life.  Every member of the family has been a photographic subject or the one behind the lens at one time or another, and for me that adds up to a lot of portraits of family and friends in my body of work.  While I have taken my fair share of digital portraits, the portraits in film are the ones I love best, perhaps because the results of black and white digital conversion still cannot compare to the range of tonality one gets with black and white film types.  I happen to love black and white portraits.

The following photo, The Naturual, shows my youngest son’s love for my favorite Diana camera.  Each Diana camera is different.  His favorite camera always seems to be what my favorite is at the time.

Photography is a family affair.

Sometimes the playmates of my children find their way into the frames as well…

an untitled portrait

Here is an angel among us.  Look at the hearts in his eyes.

un ange parmi nous

It’s nice to remember the longer days during these, the darkest, coldest, shortest days of the year.

girlfriends

More memories from the neighborhood…

a boy child

My lovely daughter…

lovely

My youngest son with my oldest son’s girlfriend…  My youngest has the brightest eyes you’ll ever see.

bright eyes

And finally a portrait of the artist herself… a very old portrait!  It was taken with my late grandfather’s old Pentax.

Pentax ID

Finally, through Decemeber 23rd, if you purchase any item from my Etsy Shop, you will receive an extra photograph!  You may contact me about availability for gifts, either through Etsy or via email at elinor@equivoquephoto.com.  Here are some of the photos currently offered in my Etsy Shop.

Becoming Light

unspoken truths

In the Form of a Dream

a poem in light

lost in translation

water, evening, poetry

and summer's lease

frozen ghosts

morning song

equivoquephoto

Portrait of a Polaroid: Memento

Whenever a photographer uses expired film, surprise will be an element of the result.  While the photographer cannot place all his or her hope in interesting effects, however, he or she cannot count on entirely controlling the result either.  Before I began this little series on working with Time-Zero film (both fresh and expired), I had written an entry about a very special pack of Time-Zero that I received from a friend, for after I shot the pack, I found myself craving its magic again and again.   Though I will not repeat the photos from that entry here, I would like to conclude this series with photos from the black magic pack because they illustrate more than any of my Polaroids how rewarding working with expired film can be.

This is my personal favorite from my own portfolio… Polaroid and otherwise.  The deep roses, blacks, and blues that the magic pack of film yielded worked beautifully with this model’s skin.  This little objet d’art remains my memento of something treasured that cannot be duplicated ever again.

memento from the underworld

I was playing with the length of the exposure time in the following shot.  In this case, I used the SX-70’s dial to “overexpose” the shot.  The other blog entry features some of the darker versions of the still life.

decay and melancholy

In conclusion, then, it is certain that I’ll not have a chance to shoot non-expired Time-Zero film in all its glory again, it is highly unlikely that I will have the the opportunity to have in my possession something like the black magic pack again, but I have about 92 shots of expired Time-Zero film in its various stages of blossoming and decay waiting for me in the refrigerator.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to shoot something worthy of the film with it.  Thank you for taking the time to look at my Polaroids.

The fourth and last in a series chronicling the transitions and decline of an aristocrat of film types, Polaroid Time-Zero film… Polaroids by Elinor Scott-Sutter.

Portrait of a Polaroid
Painted Light
Fire & Ice
The Blues
Memento

Portrait of a Polaroid: The Blues

Recently I’ve been revisiting some of my work and writing about my favorite Polaroid film type, Time-Zero, which was discontinued in 2006.  I use it in my favorite camera, the SX-70.  This installment of a series about the film/camera combination is a little out of sequence, as I wrote last time about working with expired film.  Before that I had written about the painterly qualities of the film but, in so doing, completely failed to include examples of one of the most beautiful qualities of Time-Zero film, which is its gorgeous expression of blues and cyans.  It’s for this quality that I will probably most miss my Time-Zero film.

The beauty of the skies over Lake Superior is sometimes best captured by this eloquent film type…

Photographing Instances of Light

The blues, which really don’t need description, work for portraiture, too.

Portrait with Light

The computer display just fails to adequately portray the special qualities of the film, which is how this Polaroid of Lake Superior came by its title Lost in Translation.

Lost in Translation

Lake Superior, Wisconsin…

Blue Morning

Sometimes the blues are just pure poetry…

Water, Evening, Poetry

A Poem in Light

Finally, here’s one of my favorites from my stash of Polaroids… a result of an experiment I did to trick the SX-70 into doing long exposure times at the darker side of dusk.

Blue Is the Color of Night

The blues, as a theme for classifying Polaroids, makes for for an equivoque, which is very apropos, for it is the loss of these extraordinary blues that leaves me with the mood implied by the color.

The first in a series chronicling the transitions and decline of an aristocrat of film types, Polaroid Time-Zero film… Polaroids by Elinor Scott-Sutter.

Portrait of a Polaroid
Painted Light
Fire & Ice
The Blues
Memento

Portrait of a Polaroid: Fire & Ice

Not too long ago, an online friend of mine said facetiously, while defending his choice to use toy cameras and expired film, “It’s just a matter of praying as hard as you can for the end result not to be crap.”  Of course, the opposite of that statement is true.  If you want your end results “not to be crap” when working with toy cameras or expired film, you must work hard, as you would with any other tools, and pay attention to what you are doing.  Possibly even more attention than when working with ordinary equipment and media.

I learned as much when I found myself in the unenviable predicament of being required to work with expired film if I wanted to continue to work with my preferred film and camera combination.  Of course, there wasn’t really a choice.  It’s not that I wanted to continue to work with Time-Zero film in my SX-70.  I had to.  I had spent a lot of time observing my camera’s behavior in different situations, but with the high cost of even expired film, it became more necessary than ever to quickly discover the limitations and features of an expired pack to best incorporate the attributes of the film into the photos.  Each pack is unique, making the task even tougher.  I miss my non-expired Time-Zero film, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some of the results I’ve had from my expired film.

Here’s one of my favorite models again.  She is also a photographer, and we were shooting together on the ice of Lake Superior.

The Fire in Her Eye

From the same day on the ice…

Aurora Borealis

Sometimes the results can be singular…

Singular

Sometimes the additions to what the photo might be are like gold…

passage

My hipster daughter…

Old School

The reds from expired Time-Zero can burn red if the light is warm enough, as is the case here.

the light of sweet remembrance

While the welcome accidents certainly play their role in shooting expired film, planning goes a long way to ensure the judicious use of precious film.  I will keep shooting till the money runs out.

The second in a series chronicling the transitions and decline of an aristocrat of film types, Polaroid Time-Zero film… Polaroids by Elinor Scott-Sutter.

Portrait of a Polaroid
Painted Light
Fire & Ice
The Blues
Memento