Finding Myself in Soft Glossy Grain (Adventures in Polaroid Self-Portraiture)
By Lauren Bentley
29 May 2008
I've always found self-portraiture to be a very challenging and rewarding form of photography. Every creation, regardless of its complexity involves technical and creative directing intermingled with a form of modeling or acting. As always, photography is a technical art, and to convince the viewer that the subject is absorbed in a moment or scene (when the subject is also the photographer), is no easy task!
Up until fairly recently, all of my endeavors in self-portraiture have been with digital cameras. Digital has afforded me the opportunity to truly experiment. I constantly make adjustments both in camera and in scene throughout a shoot, and it can often take a very long time and a very large number of shots before I get an image I'm going for. About six months ago, I picked up a used self-timer attachment on Ebay for my sx-70 Polaroid camera. The old mechanical timer is loud, imprecise and seems more like a toy than a tool, but I fell in love with it immediately. I have somewhere between ten and fifteen seconds after pushing the big cushy red button on the timer (depending on how tightly I wind it), to get into position, compose and then "direct myself". The result always feels like magic. A single image, on paper, uniquely soft and grainy...born from my camera - instant proof of my success or failure. With only ten exposures per Polaroid pack, and a now limited supply of the film, I try to refrain from making too many minor adjustments and re-shooting over and over again. That's simply a luxury Polaroid doesn't afford. I spend more time concentrating on atmosphere. I arrange everything more carefully before "pulling the trigger", and I've found that attempting to lose myself in those scenes I've constructed has become a more intuitive and refreshing experience.
