I honestly never thought I would be the “type” to shoot Polaroid photographs at any level. It was only after I saw Wim Wenders exhibition “Instant Stories” that I thought I might be able to bring something different to the medium.
My struggle with gear recently has been differentiation, both for my own artistic images, and for images I offer clients. Although my CL was a fun introduction to film photography I find myself using it far less often than my Hasselblad XPan. An image from a 35mm sensor is not difficult to achieve digitally, meaning the involvement of film is entirely a novelty. I found this when shooting digitally as well. The majority of digital cameras are very similar in use, and in results – I’ve had the opportunity to shoot with pretty much every major flagship digital camera for the past few years, and it was pretty monotonous stuff. Settling on Leica for digital photography and the XPan for film seems to be the way I’m going to stay in the long term future.
The involvement of the SX-70 is mostly spontaneous: I’d been keeping my eye out for one after seeing the exhibition I mentioned above, so when I found one in a charity shop I was more than happy to buy it, fix it up, and run a roll of film through it. I was only able to get hold of one pack of colour film for it at the time, which is what I’ve based this write up on. In the future I’ll be looking forward to using the black and white option as well.
My hope for the SX-70 is for it to offer some finality to my workflow, and my search for cameras that offer a vastly different experience in use and result, as well a different way of thinking and composition (I’m entirely new with square format).
As it is, my opinion is barely formed, but I enjoyed it for the day I had free to experiment with it, and I’m really looking forward to using it for assignments, and especially for classic backstage images at the upcoming London Fashion Week!
Thanks for reading! If you like my work, you can follow me on instagram, or read my personal blog for more of my thoughts and stories about my work!
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