My Polaroid Camera arrived! It’s wonderfully enormous, measuring a whopping 6 x 4.5 x 2.5 inches, as compared with my 2.5 x 3.5 x .5″ digital camera. As this is my first Polaroid, I’m still figuring out what to take pictures of and how, but the colors are really beautiful.

My first photo of flowers on my back patio. Lesson: no close-ups.

Having worked on the computer for a number of years, editing photographs entirely digitally, often never printing, it’s absolutely shocking to not only see a photograph emerge from a piece of machinery, but then to hold the photo in your hands. It’s reminded me about all of the photographs that have become so important to me throughout life from my childhood…and how I need to have physical photos from now, for later.

A bottle brush tree on my walk to the studio. Native to Australia…what the hell is it doing in Tucson?

Isn’t the coloring beautiful? It has this offline, no-pixel, non-edited feel (somewhat lost to us, of course, via this blog post). But there’s this almost dull, non-spectacular-ness (I’m making up words) that is really appealing perhaps because of all of the sensationalism penetrating our visual culture. These are refreshingly subtle.

From inside my studio at dusk…the raw illustrations laid out for an upcoming artist book.

Ok, so I love the camera. But I don’t love the price. The sheets of film end up costing over $3/each ($22 for a pack of 10, plus $11 shipping). And now the company is out of stock of this particular film (600). It also looks like there are cameras available online (new even!) for $40 (mine was $180).

So, I’m totally happy that I have in my possession this image-producing object…but is it worth it? And when will there be more film? Nonetheless, the project shall continue! Pictures of nothing might be a theme…