12 June 2009

Little pieces of time

For a child who grew up with a 110 camera (some of you out there aren’t even sure what I am talking about, are you?), a Polaroid camera with its instant, or rather 2 minute, photographs was a marvel and something to be awed by. Over time all printed pictures tend to lose the vividness the held when first printed, and Polaroid pictures were no exception, but for whatever reason the pictures, faded, tinted, and perhaps a little grainy, always had a much more tangible feel to them.

In February of 2008 Polaroid announced that it would discontinue producing the one-time wonder of its instant film, though the film would still be available into 2009. Yet, the feel of what Polaroid had been to generations of amateur photographers was not to be disbanded entirely. A terrific program, called Poladroid, allows digital photographs to be processed in a fashion similar to the Polaroid pictures of years gone by. Alain Littaye, of Disney and more, has a detailed and fascinating look at the program already, which you can read here, so we won’t continue with the technical explanation.

However, through experimentation with the program I began to wonder just what Walt Disney World would look like through the shutter of a dated Polaroid camera in 2009. It didn’t take long to find my answer, as the slide show below shows us.

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