We have a series of arty Polaroid photos sent by reader Nicholas Hiltner, along with a link to his brother’s NYT piece about the same area. Nicholas’s notes are indented:
Here are several Polaroids I took last summer. They’re from Switzerland’s Lauterbrunnen Valley, where I spent a week hiking (and eating and drinking!) with my brother. I’d include captions for you, but he wrote an article for the Times that says it all sublimely. (His photos are auch sehr schön!)
Schilthorn:
Schmadrihutte:
Moo:
Laundry drying:
Stephen Hiltner’s article, which has its own beautiful photos:
Stephen Hiltner’s description of the sounds of large nerds grazing give a whole new meaning to the phrase: “I’ve gotta have more cowbell!” .
Herds not nerds…😬
That was such a disappointing correction 🙁
I use this extremely sparingly, but, LOL! (Simon).
You can still buy Polaroid film?
Why Polaroid over digital, if you don’t mind me asking, Nicholas?
A bunch of enthusiasts & Polaroid ex-employees started producing the film after Polaroid [the company] died. It isn’t quite the same result as Polaroid original because of the difficulty of getting the exact same chemicals – but later iterations are very close.
There are three reasons for using instant film [more than one brand available] today
[1] The social immediacy – a friend uses Instax Mini film in a very compact camera which outputs a business card sized image. Great for down the pub in a group & you can pin the real result on a real wall immediately rather than on an Instagram account nobody cares about. One of the pubs I go to has a giant display of instant film of regulars doing dumb stuff at Xmas etc.
[2] The expense of the film & the slowness of snapping [you can’t do 20 machine gun style shots to capture the perfect moment], forces the snapper to think about what they’re doing.
[3] Art for art’s sake. The vintage look of the result. A lot of the old cameras aren’t exactly the same – ageing imperfectly you might say, thus unique output per the camera.
READ THIS FOR MORE INSIGHT FROM USERS
Michael’s spot on.
I’ll only add that they make for ultra-popular postcards (my favorite use). Just scribble a friend’s address on the back, stick a stamp in the corner, and pop it in the closest mailbox!
Stupendous! And yes, the article was wonderfully done. I drank it in. Thank you for this.
What a beautiful…errr, sublime, place. Would love to visit one day. The article was a pleasure to read and the photos were superb. Loved the farm cat!
Pretty Polaroids