Self-Isolation, Day 44: Anxious

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Self-Isolation, Day 44: Anxious

"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography, everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."
— David Bailey

Self-Isolation, Day 32: Strange Things

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Self-Isolation, Day 32: Strange Things

So, I am choosing to forgo a quote for today in favor of catching up with you all.

First, wherever you are in the world, I hope you are doing well. I have been keeping myself busy watching new shows (I just started Cheers) and playing various Nintendo games (Animal Crossing for the win, obviously).

Second, today’s photos, as you may have gathered, did not come out the way I intended. The color one is simply overexposed, and the black-and-white film expired in January of last year (for the record, the color film is expired as well, but, in my experience, the color chemistry holds up better than the black-and-white, at least in older formulations). My initial reaction to the first image was frustration at myself for not exposing it properly (this is one where I probably should have bumped the exposure all the way down or not used the flash, though I haven’t had many good experiences forgoing the flash), and I decided to break my own rules about redoing images and to give it a second chance, albeit in greyscale instead of color; I was, again, frustrated to see that the second image came out looking less-than-desirable. The more I looked at the two images, the more I came to realize that this very thing is what drew me to shooting Polaroids in the first place.

One thing about the process of shooting instant film is that it can be unpredictable. You don’t always nail the exposures, no matter how long you’ve been shooting, and you can’t always know what the film itself is going to do. Every time you put a pack of film into the camera, you’re taking a chance: you’re chancing a bad battery in the cartridge, you’re chancing bad emulsion, you’re chancing accidentally setting the exposure meter up too high or too low, and the list goes on. When I first started shooting, all of this was exciting to me; I didn’t care about “bad” exposures or “bad” packs of film, because that added to the fun of making photographs. The dream-like effects of things such as bad exposure or half-missing emulsion added to the image instead of taking away from it, because, if these images represent memory, time, and the reality that I live in, doesn’t it stand to reason that there should be inconsistencies between the images? After all, memories get blurry, and there are parts that fade away altogether; we never remember things exactly as they were, and some are even pure fiction that exist only in our minds.

Reality right now is strange. It feels as though we’re living in a strange science fiction film — or, as many of my friends have heard me refer to it, a weird Sigourney Weaver movie — instead of in the “real” world (whatever the word “real” means to you — as I have learned, reality is different for everyone — but that’s a topic for another day). Reality is also, much like Polaroid photography, imperfect and unpredictable. The truth is that we never know what’s coming or the impact it will have, but we have no choice but to embrace it, learn from it, and move on, carrying with us the lessons we learned as a result.

To close, this week has been frustrating. I have found myself getting angry over things that I usually don’t think twice about, and that includes the images I shot today. But, once I got over the flickering moment of anger and frustration, I took a second look, and realized that neither of the images were as bad as I had first thought, and that, even though they aren’t perfect, they are still interesting in their own right. Sure, I could have followed my first instinct, which was to chalk these images up to loss and start again, but that did not seem a fair thing to do. For one thing, it is a distinct probability that most, if not all of the images in the black-and-white pack that I have in my camera right now will come out flawed in some way or another, and, given the nature of this project, it would be incredibly stupid and wasteful to shoot until I get the perfect image for the day, because that is not what my work is about. My work is about embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly of everyday life, and showing it to others in hopes that they will find it at least a little bit relatable. Today, I broke my own rule — I tried for a do-over, and it didn’t work out. I tried to make something perfect, but nothing in life is ever perfect — if it were, what would be the fun in living?

Thank you all for sticking with me, and a big thank-you if you read through today’s post. Tomorrow, I will get back to my one-image-with-a-quote-of-the-day posts. I’ll see you then.