Tales from the Techside

I remember when I was eight years old my father gave me his old Polaroid camera. I was fascinated with how after taking a picture the Polaroid would “spit out” a black sheet framed in white and from the black faces would emerge like ghosts. I spent all summer with that Polaroid camera taking pictures of people, cars, insects whatever captured my interest for the time necessary to point and shoot.

Now the Polaroid like many things has found itself displaced by the new.

I guess it is only fitting I mean after all in this era of easy to reach digital cameras do we really need a Polaroid. If you like the classic framing of the picture with its white border and convenient finger grip Photoshop does a great job of capturing the look without the fade. We have progressed to a time when we can share our photo-wanderlust with everyone on the planet through sites such as Flickr and Snapfish without digging through old shoe boxes.

That is not to say that Polaroid will not be missed. As a legacy the quick to hand easy to share photography that Polaroid pioneered will live on in digital form, fueled by cameras crammed into everything from cell phones to key chains. Polaroid Instant printing will even live on in a new format when they start selling Zink or Zero Ink Printers (not so much a passing as a reinventing).

If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that holding on to what always worked in the past opens you up to failure in the future. If Polaroid had made the decision to transition to digital sooner rather than sticking with what worked for them I believe they would hold a more generous share of the digital photography market today. For myself I am going to go buy a couple of cartridges of polaroid instant film so my child can enjoy a Polaroid summer.

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