Polaroids No More.
So it’s been announced this week they won’t be making any more polaroids. This news fills me with dismay. Despite digital photography, Internet radio, blogging, online banking and all these new-fangled wonders, nothing genuinely baffles me like the science behind an (almost) instant pic. It’s a miracle in a big clunky, grey machine that I still, if truth be known, can’t get over.
What also fills me with wonder is this:
You can take a photo of your husband under the Christmas tree on Christmas Day 2007 and still it looks like a man under a Christmas tree on Christmas Day 1974. How that is possible is the greatest joy of modern(ish) science. There must be something inside that machine at the ‘development stage’ that gives skin tone a brownish, over-nourished 70s hue. The only difference is, that’s not advocaat in his hand.
And so to mourn its passing, I present one of my favourite family polaroids. Here immortalised for evermore is Aunty Susan, baby cousin Daniel (now 29), sister Lou (yes she did always look that miserable), brother Will, me and Uncle Geoff (the groovy one who got me into REM aged 14).
(1980).
Great shed icon too. You’re dead right about Polaroids. (And rarely were the subjects in the middle of the shot). Of course, pre-video cameras, Polaroids were the only way to produce ahem, dodgy ‘bedroom’ pics – without a crimson-faced trip to Boots The Chemist. (So I’m told).
By the way, Cinammon Stick was the B Side of the No 1 smash hit for the England football World Cup team in ‘70.
x
Sorry, it’s Dick by the way … not anonymous … if you hadn’t guessed by the saucy randomness.
Aha, a new Cinammon track to discover. Thanks Dick and welcome back to RE.
Yes, creativity in the bedroom must have been sorely lacking before instant pics. Unless you’re lucky enough to be married to an artist (So I’m told).
Dick, it was the shed reference that gave you away.
Hehe.
I have my shed featured on http://www.readersheds.co.uk
http://tinyurl.com/6rr593
It’s my proudest achievement.
You have a shed and a motorbike? Alpha Male.
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself, I tagged you.
My shed is one of the few things I truly miss from dear, old Blighty. It was small, cramped, and rickety, and I cursed its shortcomings while I owned it. But now we’ve parted… sigh.
Shed, Archers, fantastic cheese at reasonable prices, free houses, Greene King IPA, Courage Directors Bitter, architecture older than 50 years. That’s about the entire list of things missed.
*Sinks into a nostalgic bog*
Cobbled streets? I missed those when I tried another continent.
Mmm, not a must-have for me. And here in Vancouver you can occasionally see a bit of old cobble under the asphalt and betwixt the disused trolley lines.
My favourite polaroid has pride of place on our mantelpiece – it is a picture of me in 1989 talking on a gianourmous mobile phone – it is practically twice the size of my head.
Jpegz Plz.