2016-52: Instant Holidays

This is my “Roll” 52 for 2016, though in fact it includes images from 4 packs of instant film. I am amazed that I got to this point on time this year as I was unable to post or even comment on other people’s posts for several months due to being away and totally off grid and other pressures on my time. In various ways I did not meet all the rules this year. Apart from not posting in a timely manner, there were a couple of weeks that I did not get a chance to shoot any film. Some weeks I shot several rolls so in the end I shot 67 rolls or packs of film with 21 different cameras. I have three rolls in cameras that were loaded this year that are unlikely to be finished until 2017.

Thank you to Urban for maintaining this site (don’t forget to donate toward his image storage and other costs, button on the upper right of this page). And a big thank you to all readers for your eyes on these posts, and for likes and comments. The 52 Rolls community is a great place to hang out and learn and even to be blown away by a wonderful image.

I have posted a retrospective of my favourite film shots from 2016 on my blog at the same time as this post is published. You can see that post at this link – I hope you have the time to check it out.

I find it interesting to compare with my 2015 retrospective (link here). I think that in general terms I took more interesting film photos in 2015; probably a consequence of being busy and not getting out enough with photography as a sole purpose in 2016. It might also be due to a diminished interest/excitement for the project in my second year.

For 2017 I doubt that I will participate fully in the 52 Rolls project. I said the same thing last year, but did start out by posting just to make sure I did not get too far behind if it proved possible to fit in. And that kind of kept me in it, so maybe the same will happen this year. Or maybe I will try posting a digest of 4 weekly rolls once a month, or something like that. We will have to see!

So, to this week’s post – I decided to document the holidays solely on instant film. Mostly this meant shooting with the Instax Mini 8 (3 packs), but I also made a few images with a Polaroid Land 100 Auto. These photos range from Christmas day through yesterday.

The Mini 8 was almost exclusively indoors where the flash was necessary. Good thing, since the flash always fires. The Land 100 was used out of doors, and I tried a number of different things with it, including double exposures. The camera is difficult to use – partly because the viewfinder is about 25% off, so framing a shot accurately involves guesstimating. I expect I could fix this problem, although a repair manual says I need “special tool #169443” which I suppose might be an obstacle. With the lack of film for this camera, I have not been motivated to make repairs. Besides which this pack of film has been sitting in the camera for nearly two years getting in the way of repairs. I am not sure if it was me, though probably it was, that caused the film to pull partially through, resulting in parts of one image on two sheets, combined with an unintended double exposure on the second half sheet. The last image in the pack did not present the white tab to pull it through so it looked as if there was no more film in the pack and that one was wasted too. But, for all the waste, I did get a couple of shots that I like – especially the double exposure above.

The plum pudding was excellent. We mixed it up at my parents place in November (picture here).

My son-in-law, an arborist, took down the remainder of our apple tree. It was a huge King that dominated the whole back yard, but 2/3 of it fell last year, the remaining third had rot, and leaned towards windows. The backyard feels all wrong now.

Our granddaughter helped make a chestnut and Brussels sprout pie which is far, far more delicious that it might sound.

She insists on wearing “princess dresses”, to the astonishment of her parents who don’t wear dresses at all, or tiaras.

My son visited on Boxing Day. He was as tired as he looks due to long days of work and nights mixing music in the studio.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny but chilly day. Good light for FP-100c film. I just put all the exposed shots in the camera bag and peeled them apart when I got home. This meant I was not getting any feed back on my framing guesstimates, but this one worked out pretty well.

To see an enlarged version of any image in the gallery below, click on it and then navigate to others with the arrows or with swiping.

Land 100: learning how to guesstimate framing prior to going downtown

Land 100: loom in window

Land 100: Old town Victoria

Land 100: Double exposure, one exposure extremely bright stainless steel tanks which blew out the photo.

Land 100: Double exposure in old town of same building, different angles

Instax: Look at this website!

Instax: I need a nap

Instax: removing the apple

Instax: look at dad cutting down the apple tree

Instax: sketching

Instax: reading a new book

Instax: guests, twins

Instax: opening a present for the Hitty dolls

Instax: guests, relatives

Instax: father in law and friend

Instax: colouring the leaf decoration

Instax: pie lid placement

Instax: putting the leaf decoration on

Instax: almost ready for oven

Instax: pie ready for the oven

Instax: hugs with mum

Instax: whee!

Instax: hugs with grandma

Instax: how long till you take the shot (photo by my son)

Instax: Christmas dinner

Instax: the end of the meal

Instax: Plum pudding – yum

Instax: family stuffed by a large meal

2016-52: Instax Mini 8, Instax Colour; Polaroid Land 100 Auto with Fuji FP-100c (expired 2011)..

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