I have a small amount of Polaroid left over from the film days and I still have my student quality Sinar I bought almost 20 years ago. There was a time when I shot portraits on the 4x5 – as well as food. So for the second time this year I hauled all of it out to relive the ol’ days. Shooting one frame at a time is such a different pace then shooting digital it almost seems as though the two processes should have different names - photography … and still image recording …

The Polaroid film I used for this shoot was 7 years past its “use by” date. I could tell some of it was not usable by feeling the pouch that holds the developer fluid – it was solid and crunchy. The sheets that felt as though they were still viable were few. As a result, with one exception, I took no more then three frames of each set up. I discovered after the first shot that a little massaging and “cooking” in front of an electric heater was required to get the image to develop nicely. After seeing some successful shots I hurt my elbow patting myself on the back.