The End of an ICON

The above picture is in memory of the instant film ERA from Polaroid. Sadly but not surprisingly, Polaroid has announced its decision to cease the making of Instant film after a 60 year run.

From there site:

"Notification of Polaroid Instant Film Availability

Due to marketplace conditions, Polaroid has discontinued almost all of its instant analog hardware products. Polaroid has also made the difficult decision to cease manufacturing of instant film products in 2008"

After reading this news i felt very sad. I am the typical 40 year old that grew up in the 80's that loved to watch the process from taking the picture, waiting for the picture paper to be spit out, waving it back and forth and even blowing on it to finally have a picture slowly appear. Awesome!!!!

Somehow this type of instant was much more fun then a digital instant picture. I guess since one can hold the picture in your hand while digital pictures is still not real, not something you can really hold onto. The quality didn't even matter that much. No one expected it to be good so we expected a crappy picture but still loved it anyway. Now i won't even show one of my pictures unless I thought it fulfilled all the "good" photograph rules i.e. rule of thirds, full tonal range, properly cropped and composed etc... With polaroid, no one cared about those rules. It was the first true point and shoot with no f-stop settings, no shutter speed settings or even manual or auto focusing features.

End of another ERA for me and another reminder poke that I am getting old.