Fuji Instax Wide Photography – Fun & Imperfect

I came to photography in the digital age. I have no nostalgic feelings about hours in the dark room, the smell of the chemicals or keeping things pure. I’m digital through & through and truth be told, back when I started If I had been forced to wait days or hours for my images to develop, I probably wouldn’t have taken up photography at all. Despite being from the last generation that had to wait for things to officially be released before consuming, not having all the information in the world on my phone and also having to go to a physical shop to buy things, I think I’ve adopted the ‘on demand’ or ‘instant culture’ easily and fly it’s flag high…basically, I left my patience behind in 2005

The downside of shooting digital is you often forget to print images and they stay on hard drives. Being a professional photographer and wanting all my images to look the very best they can, I often shoot a lot of frames and strive for the perfect angle, composition and light. I feel compelled to run all my images through Lightroom and do a little editing on them also. But, when I look back at photos of me as a wee nipper, I love the fact that it was moment driven in its purest form. My mum or dad simply picked up the camera, see the moment, point it at me and click. There’s an honesty about those pictures and even though sometimes they came out darker than wanted, the colours seem off or even come out a little blurry (basically everything I try to avoid when i shoot), they still seem to work.

So a couple of years ago I decided I wanted a polaroid camera so I could capture moments with no pressure of perfection and have instant prints to show off to my boys and to satisfy my lack of patience. I haven’t looked back since and try and grab a couple of shots with it regularly. I throw all the images in a box and have basically created a memory box that I love to delve in to from time to time. Ive even popped some up on some string with pegs in a true hipster way in my hallway and it looks lovely.

I think I started to write this blog wanting to make a statement about why printing images is a good thing or why shooting instant film is making me a better ‘moment’ photographer but truthfully, I just wanted to say that I love shooting on my Fuji Instax Wide for fun…….Damn, this really could have been a much shorter blog 🙂