Friday, July 18, 2008

Digital Polaroids

After finishing up my internship at the Journal Star in Peoria, Ill. I went on tour with the band Handbook for Boys, playing shows up and down the East Coast for a couple of weeks. While on the road I decided to start making what I'm calling Digital Polaroids. In this, the first/prototype stage, all a DP consists of is a simple life-size polaroid frame that I made out of white foam board. The goal is not to make a photo that looks like a flawless polaroid, but rather to make it obvious that this frame is actually in the shot (leaving in the edges of the photo and showing the hands holding the frame together, etc.). Here are just a few of the ones I've worked up since getting back from the trip. This first one is almost all luck. I was trying to set up a simple photograph of the I <3 N.Y. painted on the side of a building in Brooklyn when this guy biked through the frame. It's an imperfect shot, but in a way that's a part of the whole thing. Next you have band member Charlie Shuck with the NYC skyline in the background. Then there's a quick picture I made (holding the frame myself, tricky) of Charlie and Joe Shuck in Washington D.C. Lastly, is the first DP band photo that we tried. In the background is the shrine to Stonewall Jackson (a.k.a. the house where he died in Virginia). There are a bunch more of these from the road, but so far I haven't sorted through all of them yet. Hopefully, I can refine this process a little more and make something cool out of it. Oh yeah, you can check out the band (plug) at:

www.myspace.com/handbookforboys

Digital Polaroid Brooklyn
Digital Polaroid NYC Skyline
Digital Polaroid Washington DC
Digital Polaroid Shrine to Stonewall Jackson