About
Polaroidiary is no More (March, 2008)
The last update was November, 2006. Before that I’d already been having some problems keeping motivated to make a new polaroid every day, and after a while new things occupied my time and, well, Polaroidiary died with more a sigh than a bang. I loved doing it and although I’m somewhat disappointed with myself for not managing the original goal (one polaroid a day, every day for one year) I’m simultaneously proud at having achieved as much as I did. And either way, I love the fact that I have this visual record of an important chunk of my life. Here’s the about page, as it stood when Polaroidiary died. Enjoy the images.
What’s going on here?
This is my visual diary, which I started on March 21st, 2004. As it says in the footer, I make one photo a day, (almost) every day. Almost every day I put the new images up on the site.
Those aren’t really polaroids, are they?
As a matter of fact, yes, they are. Every day I make a photo, write the date (European style, which is to say dd.mm.yy) on it with a Sharpie and stick it in a little cigar box I carry everywhere with me. Almost every day I lay the new images on my scanner, correct the colours and contrast in Photoshop, and throw them up on the site.
What kind of camera do you use?
I’ve got three two (see this entry) Polaroid SX-70 Land cameras, and am in love with them all.
If you’re interested in funky old Polaroid cameras, George has a great SX-70 site, or you could just dive right in.
And who are you then?
I’m Matt Balara, 34 38 years old, American by birth, Australian by tendency and both by citizenship. It’s possible, but relatively unlikely, that you know me from my old text blog, Boogie Church (no site any more, so no link). I’ve lived in Hamburg Germany since early ‘98, and although I continually tell everyone “I’m moving back to Australia next year”, I’ll probably be here for a while yet. It took a couple years, but I can now speak relatively fluent German, which isn’t as bad as it sounds.
Did you do this all by yourself?
Nope. Natascha was nice enough to lend me her SX-70 for a few weeks when I was getting started. I’m indebted to the folks over at Six Apart for their wonderful blog content management system, MovableType. Thanks to Brad Choate for his MovableType plugin EmbedImage, which helps me greatly in managing my images, and for his emails explaining how to use it. The site’s been on WordPress for quite a while now, and My background patterns are generously made available to the public by Travis Beckham at squidfingers, and have been adjusted slightly by myself. Todd Dominey made me aware of such bounty. the background is now my own, based on a photo of some funky old wallpaper. And eternal thanks are due to Dr. Edwin Land for his magical photographic process, although we’re all pretty disappointed in you Polaroid, for throwing in the towel. It may be a losing cause, but let’s save polaroid anyway, shall we?
