Last autumn (2009) I shot a pack of exquisitely expired Time-Zero film, and the results were primordial. At about that same time I was reading up on Dreamtime. The photos coincidentally reflected the materials I was reading, and so the series ended up with The Time Before Time as a title.
The Time Before Time
The Time Before Time, 2
The Time Before Time, 3
The Time Before Time, 4
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.)
Posted in Etsy, Photography, Toy Camera
Tagged b/w photography, black and white portraiture, elinor scott-sutter, equivoque, Etsy, film photography, fine art photography, free print, garden of the ordinary, holga, lake superior, landscape, new year special, Photography, polaroid photography, portrait, portraiture, sale, Toy Camera, waterscape
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
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
Posted in Photography, Polaroid
Tagged blues, elinor scott-sutter, equivoque, lake superior, Photography, poetry, Polaroid, portrait, sx-70, time-zero, waterscape
It’s easy to cite camera gear as the obvious tools of the trade when it comes to making photos. For instance, I used a Hasselblad 500 C/M with a Zeiss Distagon T* CF 50mm f4.0 lens and a Hasselblad 60 1X UV-SKY -0 (1A) multicoated filter to make these images. The film was Kodak Tri-X Pro 320. For me, however, the real tools of the trade are nearly always patience and persistence.
I have learned that, if you are patient enough, you can shoot moving targets with a Hasselblad!
Fledglings
The cold, cold waters of Lake Superior…
Testing the Waters
And all around there is water…
The Waves
The end of an afternoon…
The Benediction
Posted in Hasselblad, Photography
Tagged elinor, elinor scott-sutter, equivoque, film photography, Hasselblad, lake superior, portrait, waterscape, waterscapes
a garden of the ordinary 