Keeping It Instant At Petit Le Mans

(click for) Portrait Gallery - (click for) Journal GalleryApologies for the disconnect over the past month. I just finished up the season shooting at Road Atlanta for the 13th Annual Petit Le Mans. For those who don't know, Petit is a 1000K/10 hour (whichever comes first) event and is now the season finale for the American Le Mans Series. I'll have more on the race in a couple of days.

I had originally set a goal of doing a special Polaroid (more correctly instant film) project at Petit Le Mans. I did get to do a bit of a dry run… but things didn't fall into place as I had hoped. I'm still committed to the project and am formulating a plan for next season. The dry run did go kind of well.

Patrick Putze completed my Polaroid 110A/B pack film conversion for the 3x4 peel-apart film in time for the trip. I really like this camera and the film availability is going to make using this camera much easier.

I played with two cameras for the most part. I was hoping to receive The Impossible Project's new PX 600 Silver Shade UV+ film in-time for the trip, but that wasn't in the cards. I wanted to shoot that in my SX-70. But I did take a long a Polaroid Spectra and shot some of the Edge Cut SoftTone integral film from T.I.P. This film is a lot of fun for producing funky party-like snaps in the Polaroid format. When you shoot someone with a Spectra and integrated film, they're going to give you a fun response.

The other camera I used was the new Polaroid 110A/B conversion mentioned above. With this camera I shot portraits using FujiFilm FP110B and FP3000b black and white peel-apart. I'm really happy with both those films. The 3000 ISO is a little lacking in contrast, but nice to have that type of speed. The 100 is simply awesome.

In addition to the FujiFilms, I also scored some Polaroid Sepia 1500 from the New York store of The Impossible Project. This film is REALLY nice. I wouldn't mind a little slower version… but I can live with the look of the 1500.

In order to get images up on Facebook throughout the week, I came up with a solution that wouldn't require that I drag a scanner to Atlanta. I found a nice leather writing journal and shot the instant prints as a still life. I simply placed the finished photo on one page, jotted a quick caption/note on the opposite page and with the pen still lying on the page, used my Leica Digilux2 to take a close-up. A towel draped over the back of a chair made for a nice white bounce surface for the Leica's flash and each page was shot in short order.

I've posted a sample gallery of the journal entries and another sample gallery of the peel-apart film portraits. I had a slight issue with some light flare on the peel-apart films… (tracking that issue down now) but for the most part, I really like them. A little more practice over the winter - manual focus is a bear with these cameras - and I think I'll begin to see some great results.

• SAMPLE GALLERY - Journal Entries

• SAMPLE GALLERY - Polaroid Portraits

JT

Comments

[Matt]

These still-life shots are quite the creative little invention born of necessity. An elegant solution to say the least, and highly inspiring!