The Plastic Lens

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etwixt Christmas Day & New Years Day there exists (for me) a kind of limbo, a miasma of half asleep apathy and inertia. It could be the effects of all the food and drink, not to mention the mad running around we have done, or perhaps the residual effects of the recent night shifts I completed…most probably it is a combination of all of the above.
We are the fortunate ones, with family and friends who love us, ample food, drink and a roof over our heads. The photos I share here are taken at my brother and sister-in-law’s place on Christmas night. I used an old Polaroid Vision camera with the second last pack of my expired 500 integral film stock. The colours from the expired film gave every shot a very sepia tone. I have tweaked the ‘curves’ a bit to enhance the resultant image here, because although I like the expired effects of SX-70 Integral film, the expired 500 or Spectra film just makes the shots washed out and brown…
The first shot (ensure you have javascript enabled in your browser and you will be able to click on the thumbnail and browse to more images) shows some of the family children caught just after the sugar rush kicked in, the second was the wonderfully surreal sight that greeted me when I looked out at my brother’s back yard, where (as you do), he has a small boat floating in a small (but slightly larger than the boat) kids pool. The last image is a capture of the side of my nephew & niece’s cubby house, which I liked for it’s abstract qualities, sort of like a Leger with Klee’s pastel tones.
I think I may have to set a particular theme for the last 10 Polaroid Vision (500) exposures I have left. I am really going to miss Polaroid film when my stash dries up.

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have been involved in two podcasts in the past week, the first was last saturday morning when I joined in a chat with (traveling East) Susan Burnstein in Los Angeles, Ed Wenn in Great Britain and Don Brice in Adelaide, for the last filmwasters podcast of 2008. I was drinking wine at 9 in the morning after a nightshift, so I cannot really recall what we talked about, I will have to wait until Ed puts it online to refresh my memory. (I do remember offering to pose nude for Don’s last stash of Polaroid large format film, oddly enough) Then on Wednesday I joined Phil (in Footscray, Melbourne) and Michael (in Tasmania) for the Christmas Photogeek podcast, I talked a load of rubbish in that ‘cast too. Am I a podcast slut or what?