Personal Essays

I will miss the noise.

Everyone who has ever heard it can recall it: the sound a polaroid makes when you take a picture and it ejects from the camera. I'll miss other things, too: the softness of polaroid pictures, the unpredictable results, the way shots enhance shadows and capture glowing light.

There was always something about polaroids. The way you have just 10 chances at most in the camera at any one time, so you have to wait and watch and conserve. How there is only that one shot, capturing that instant, in it's own portable white frame. Then the light shifts, things move, and it isn't the same.

I have one twinpack of 600 in my fridge. I'll probably be able to get more film at least for awhile, but I'm not going to go broke stockpiling it.

Shooting with digital, it will be sharper, and there will be infinitely more chances to get the shot. But it will be quieter.