The Polaroid Job

I loved the narration. Made me laugh quite a few times. Great slide show!

I've worked in a small camera store after retiring from the paper boy trade when I was a kid. In the 1980s I'd curse the Polaroid delivery when it came each week as I humped 20 cases of all formats into the store. I did class reunion photos using a 4x5" view camera and Type 59 instant film. This weekend my store is doing a Halloween event and my 13 year old son is taking shots of the little kids in costume with a Fuji instant camera. Thanks for your family's story.

The simple, unfiltered commentary ran perfectly alongside the images. There's rawness and truth in those Polaroids that seem in contrast to today's multiple shot, professionally filtered documenting of what we imagine our lives to be. It makes me appreciate what might have been a more honest time in our country. I love Mike's message: making people happy is important work.

Charming snapshot. 110, though, isn't a millimeter film size, just Kodak's format code. The film was single sprocket 16mm. I checked, this mangy stuff is newly-available should anyone feel nostalgia. Polaroid format film also.

The Science Center at Harvard was built with a donation from the founders of Polaroid. The building is in the shape of a Polaroid camera. I'm guessing that no student on campus has a clue.

beautiful... now I wanna Be Something

Thanks for sharing!

Great story! I worked a big Polaroid of the same type in the late 1970s. I was in high school and college, and I worked with Cherry Hill Studios in Cherry Hill, NJ. Most of their work was weddings, bar/bat mitzvahs and similar family events, and the Polaroid was an additional revenue stream. At one large bar mitzvah in Cinnaminson, NJ, as each guest entered, I took a Polaroid of them behind a flat. One flat for singles, and a second flat for couples. Each Polaroid was then inserted into a folder that had a studio photo of the bar mitzvah boy on the front cover, and a little poem/thank you note from the bar mitzvah boy on the inside. Another time, a store on Main Street in Moorestown, NJ was having an open house, so they hired teenagers to dress up as Bert and Ernie, and I took the photo of them with each little kid. Unlike your Spiderman, which was provided by Marvel, Bert and Ernie were not licensed, so the store advertised "those famous characters from that famous street...." It's interesting that when hard copy photos cost some money and time to process, giving away a hard copy photo was a good way to attract customers, unlike now when anyone with a smart phone can take a decent snapshot. One small correction; the photos you show with the month and year on the side are not Polaroids. They are traditional photos printed by a lab (probably sold through a drugstore). The month and year is when the photos were processed.

What a wonderful childhood! What a lucky guy.

Thanks! Loved the simplicity of it. The perfect momentary stay against the front page of today's news, yesterday's news and probably tomorrow's news. Thanks Mike!!

Part of the appeal a Polaroid photograph has is that not only are you looking at an image taken long ago but the image is on an object that was there with the person or people being photographed. There was no transference from a negative to a piece of photo paper, no reading of a digital code. That little square was probably held and appraised by the subject it recorded.

Thanks so much for starting my day with charm and grace and love!

Yes, there is tremendous value in making people happy. Thank you for the great story!

MIKE PLANTE Has, for a brief moment, transported the readers to a more innocent time, when the speed of interactions was more human in its pace and limited by the state of technology. Going to a mall to have Polaroid pictures taken sounds so quaint and charming. But such an experience is unthinkable in this day and age, when most people walk around with highly advanced pocket-sized computers that have taken over many direct human interactions. To the extent that I think of Mae West who, were she around these days, might ask an unsuspecting person, Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just going to play with your cell phone?

What a wonderful video!! Love it. Also loved the 'gallery show'. The signage on the wall was great...a work of art unto itself with its simplicity and the arrangement of the letters. Though I have to say...the bunny costume (i.e., the face) was a bit er...unsettling? ;-)