English content Originally posted on ELLO

HOW INSTANT PHOTOGRAPHY CAME BACK TO MY LIFE

When I was a child (you did know this explanation had to begin like this ^^) I used to play with a Polaroid instant Camera. The kind of camera that had 10 shots and a disposable flash you had to turn back to keep using.
As many other photographers experienced in their childhood it was a kind of magic. Then I grew up, had no real money and cannot afford working with film cameras and also nobody to teach me or introduce me to 35mm photography so I wasn’t able to overcome that money issue at that time.
I really came back to photography 10 years ago with the first digital cameras (the one you had to put a 3’5 computer disk in it ^^) and then it became a real part of my life.

Fast forward today. I got married a few weeks ago officially. I write « officially » because my wedding is split into two: official ceremony in Paris, France and celebration in Malaga, Spain in two weeks. For the big party in Spain I have hired a professional wedding photographer - and you can imagine it was not that easy to choose ^^. But what I did for Paris is order a small Fuji Neoclassic N90 instant camera. It works with instant films, just like old Polaroid ones except the size of the picture is more like a credit card. And I gave it to the people that were here, beginning by those that know how to handle a camera.
The result was amazing! I still need to scan the films to reintegrate them in my digital workflow and save them for time (what a paradox!). Then I’ll be able to share maybe some of the pictures here.

Limiting the number of pictures is an amazing part of the process. People know they have 10 shots and will have to give the camera to another person, so they make a particular effort in the compositing and choice of subject. It seems obvious for us, so called photographers, that are a lot into pictures. It is already part of our process, but for those who don’t have a culture or a training like we do, it’s a new way to approach photography and train the eye without even knowing it.

Reveling the picture immediately is also an amazing way to share. It is a real way to communicate and share with people. I was listening to a podcast yesterday - the first from Jeffrey Saddoris - process driven with Dalton Campbell - and Dalton Campbell told that a camera is for him an extension to meet and share with people that he would have never met. This make a lot of sense when you can show the picture on paper immediately and discover it at the same time as the people you photographed. You did not take a look and evaluate it before them, you’re doing this together.

I will push the process a bit further during the Spanish event and create an instant wedding album all during the night. I also immediately bought a Fuji Instax share printer. It’s the very same process as the instant camera, but you can send picture directly from your phone, or even better in my case from my Fuji X-T1 camera. It will allow to print images immediately as the instant camera would do, but also to print them again to give them to people.

Finally, I’m eager to get some time and shoot again in studio to test this very same process and give images - physically - immediately to the model I’m working with.
Definitely this is a work in progress and I love how the past and present has met together once again to create a new process, a new way to communicate, share and express ourselves.

J'ai écrit cet article sur Ello à l'origine. Pour le voir directement sur le site c'est par ici, angestudio sur Ello. Bonne lecture!