Alternative meets Digital?

I talk about exploring the alternative techniques of photography, and Polaroid falls under this very title, but this post is dedicated to the merging of alternative meets digital. Polaroid has just released a new product that bridges the boundary between digital and analogue photography.

Polaroid is a trademarked camera and film company that produced instant photographs, but has since ceased production of their instant film (Wilson, 2008). Due to the mass popularization of photography and an increasing interest in the instantaneous, Polaroid has become re-popularized. Polaroid itself has created a new product that is aimed at mainstream digital enthusiasts, while on the other hand a group of individuals have recreated the old traditional instant film.

While Polaroid has ceased production of the analogue instant film, The impossible Project brought life back into the analogue cameras and instant film photography (D-Photo, 2010).

“In October 2008 the Impossible Project saved the last Polaroid production plant
for integral instant film in Enschede (NL) and started to invent and produce totally
new instant film materials for traditional Polaroid cameras. In 2010 Impossible
saved analogue instant photography from extinction by releasing various, brand
new and unique instant films.” (Impossible, 2010)

Polaroid have jumped ship and joined the digital bandwagon. The Polaroid PoGo Grey Label GL 10 is an “instant mobile printer” that aims at “marrying the convenience of today’s digital images and the original Polaroid instant experience”. It is a wireless printer that prints from mobiles phones and laptops.

Polaroid has created this new instantaneous digital printer that links digital photography and Polaroid’s reputation as an instant analogue photo producer. The bridging of these two elements has created a new product that relates back to alternative photography. After abandoning production of their analogue cameras and film, they have been able to adapt to the mass popularization of digital photography while maintaining an essence of traditional Polaroid film.

My personal opinion on this new product is why? I understand the draw for having a picture printed out instantly has appeal, but ultimately we opt to keep and store our images in a digital format; on our phones, on the web, or external hard drives. If we print a single image out, it is one image shared physically, one on one, one copy, and you only have access when the particular individual shows you. Digitally it is one image shared between many, time and access are irrelevant as online countless individuals can view, access, and share the single image at one time, anytime of day.

If you would like anymore information on the topics, please leave a comment.

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Wilson, J. (2008). Fans Bid Farewell to Polaroid. CNN Tech. Retrieved August 19, 2011, from http://articles.cnn.com/2008-12-08/tech/polaroid.farewell_1_instant-film-polaroid-corp-day-polaroid?_s=PM:TECH

Impossible Project. (2010). Retrieved August 19, 2011, from http://www.the-impossible-project.com/about/

D-Photo. (2010). Polaroid Back from the Grave. Digital Photography Made Easy. Retrieved August 19, 2011, from http://www.dphoto.co.nz/photography-news-6900/polaroid-back-from-the-grave/

Instant Mobile Printer. (2011) Retrieved August 19, 2011, from http://store.polaroid.com/product/0/425422/GL10/_/Instant_Mobile_Printer

Pet Peeve

Image courtesy Karen Yarbrough.

This typographic poster accuratly dipicts one of the many stimgas attatched to being a photographer in the digital culture. They assume that the more expensive your camera, the better you images. Truth is, it's the individual. Someone can own the most expensive camera but have no idea how to use it. The art of making and taking a photo must be practiced, it is not just aquire it as soon as you touch a camera.

Why is Photography Important?

Photography has been around since 1826, when French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce became the first person to produce a permanent photograph; photography has since become one of the most popular cultural practises this century (Hirsch, 1999).

Photography is “the act of recording images on sensitized material by the action of light” (here). The act of recording events and information is important for historical and cultural reasons.

Documenting society is essential for present and future peoples to better understand the past. Not only is photography important for cultural reasons, but it plays an important part in keeping alive, maintaining, and creating personal and social relations. Common beliefs aided in the shaping of traditional family roles in communities, men were the supporters of the family while woman stayed at home to care for the children; traditional pre modernisation family values (Giddens, 1991, p84). As a result of strong family and social values, photographs and cultural behaviours converged into social practices such as the taking of the family portrait to safeguard family heritage, photo albums, and photography as a craft. By drawing on these examples of behaviours, we can see how important photography is socially and culturally, and how it has become an inherited part of society as it reinforces traditional ideas of community.

In a digital world, portable cameras enable people to create and maintain instant social relations through an array of computer mediated communication platforms. This is not only reinforcement as to how important photography is, but how integrated the behaviour of taking a photo has become in mainstream culture. For example, while traditional photo albums were one item shared with many, uploading photos online means that one digital album can be shared with multiple people at one time with the bonus of having twenty-four-hours access to your photographs.

Photography has been around for almost two hundred years and has evolved with communities as technology has advanced. The recording of images it is an important and unavoidable part of the twentieth century.
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References

Hirsch, R. (1999) Seizing the Light: A History of Photography. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. U.S.A.: Stanford University Press.

What is alternative photography?

Hello! So this is my first official blog in regards to alternative photography, but I have not yet pin pointed what I think alternative photography is?

Well, Wikipedia defines alternative or 'experimental' photography as any photographic process or product falling outside the realm of straight film or digital photography (here). Alternative Photography.com gives a less generalised definition by stating that it is a non-traditional and (now) non-commercial variety of printing processes.

Personally, alternative photography is anything non-digitally printed and not commonly practised in mainstream society. A more 'historical' approach to photography could you say? Essentially the alternative photography processes I explore fall outside mainstream techniques of photography.

Personal Voice

The purpose of my blog, is to spread my love and enthusiasm for photography, not just the common digital and film techniques, but the hidden and forgotten types of alternative photography that exist in secret online and offline crevasses.

My passionate relationship with photography has spanned almost a decade, from high school, through two years of Tafe studies, and ongoing now in my second year at Curtin University. While I shoot majority of my images in digital for the purpose of convenience, alternative photography is something I have explored on and off for many years.

In a world filled with the instant and digital, I feel that people are missing out on the act of taking and touching a physical photograph. Being able to create and watch an image unfold in front of you is a practice some individuals do not know existed. I believe that photography is an art form that needs to be kept alive not only in its digital form, but the many other alternative physical forms.

Follow and enjoy as I blog about the forgotten photography.