Whence, wherefore and whither PolaProjects?

Inspired recently by several artsy-creative-OCD friends and colleagues — including James Tinnelly and Alex Fourier — plus the discovery with my children of a big stack of old Polaroids of friends and family, I caught the Polaroid-Instant-photography bug! Oh, I’ve got it bad…Polaroid: the Sultan (me) with my Lizard/Turtle Son. Halloween 1995?

Why instant-photography? Well, it’s definitely NOT because I want to harm the environment (I’ll recycle everything) and NOT because I’m turning away from digital photography. It’s just that Digital is more about making the “capture” and editing your images afterward, which is great for everyday snaps and street photography, or studio/commercial work. But I guess I’m going for the “non-digital-one-chance-to-compose-and-crop-in-the-viewfinder” approach of instant photography, which is more a process of “making a picture” (as Ansel Adams said) than just taking one. And, of course, I’m visually, artistically drawn to the Polaroid-instant-analog film look-and-feel, softness, vignetting, light-leaks, aberrations…