This past weekend, The Instant Film Society hosted, what was more than likely, the largest gathering of instant film enthusiasts in the state of Texas.  More than fifty photographers and lovers of instant film gathered at Makeshift Photography‘s studio in Deep Ellum to participate in a PolaWalk and also have their portraits taken on Impossible’s 8×10 film.

A couple of days before the event, I spent a little time with Steve Reeves, Troy Bradford & Tyler Tyndell at Steve’s studio to get some things organized for this.  We met up to talk 8×10 photography, get things set in place for Saturday’s PolaWalk and tested out a few things before we parted ways for the night.  While we were there, we decided it would probably be best if we went ahead and knocked out a couple of the portraits before we had the rush of people that we were expecting on Saturday.  Tyler took some great BTS photos of our meet up that evening.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, I was excited beyond belief.  I couldn’t wait to get into the studio to set up for this particular PolaWalk.  We’ve hosted quite a few since the Instant Film Society was founded, but nothing up to this point, had been as highly anticipated as this particular event.   The lure of 8×10 cameras and large format instant film was creating quite a buzz within the photography community.  About two weeks ago, I shot 8×10 instant film for the first time and immediately fell in love with the medium.  It’s simply incredible.  There’s nothing else like it out there in the market place and it’s quite honestly a rarity in a sense.  At this point in time, only one company makes it and because of the high cost of materials & tools needed, most photographers don’t ever get a chance to see it or use it.  Giving that opportunity to the D/FW instant community was something I was really looking forward to helping provide.

When Synthia and I got to MakeShift Photography’s studio on the day of the PolaWalk, Steve & Erin were prepping for the event and all of us were eager to get things started.  Friends of ours started to trickle into the studio and within an hour or so, we were all gearing up for a busy day.  I had split the 8×10 photo shoots up into two groups so it wouldn’t be too incredibly busy while we worked and by the time 3 o’clock rolled around, the studio was packed.  Steve had his Toyo View 8×10 set up on one side of the studio utilizing a “blackground” and I was set up on the other side with my Burke & James Grover shooting towards a blank wall.  Erin was loading up the 8×10 Polaroid holders and running the processor all afternoon and Synthia was scanning the 8×10’s, peeling the images and hanging them up to dry.  It was definitely a group effort to get this whole shabang running quickly & smoothly.

When most of the participants had arrived, Daniel Rodrigue took the first group out to walk around Deep Ellum while the rest of us stuck around to start with 8×10 portraits.  It was such a cool thing to be able to give this opportunity to these fellow photographers.  I assume most hadn’t seen an 8×10 camera before.  Everyone it seemed was just in awe of the process and I could tell were all stoked to have the chance to learn about this special way of creating images.

All in all, I think we ended up taking about 25+ 8×10 images and the ones who were photographed were thrilled to have an instant 8×10 portrait of their own.  Attached are some of my personal favorites from our time at the studio …

A couple of friends of mine, Daniel Poe & Matthew Hogan were there at this event and I did let them take over and rearrange the setup for their images.  These guys are brilliant with off-camera flash and there was no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to watch them work.  They quickly rearranged the octabox & stripboxes for their portraits and when I took the test images on the “digi-roid”, I knew they had crafted something nice …

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToQ_ULdpA4g&w=560&h=315]

Because I was in the studio all day, I never had the chance to go out and shoot with the rest of the group that was wandering around Deep Ellum.  It was really cool to see all of the great images that flooded into my inbox on Sunday. Here’s a handful of images from the PolaWalk portion of this event …

I haven’t mentioned this on my blog yet,  but I was interviewed last week by the local ABC news affiliate, WFAA – Channel 8, for a story they are doing on people who choose older forms of technology even when newer more advanced technologies are available.  One of the reporters was with the group on Saturday to tape our PolaWalk and ended up interviewing a lot of the participants.  After he recorded all of this great footage, Ryan came up to me and told me that they were probably going to do a separate story on our event in addition to the one I was going to be featured in.  That’s exciting.  It’s promotion for The Instant Film Society and more promotion for instant film in general.

I’m still a little stunned that we had around fifty photographers and instant film enthusiasts join us this past weekend.  It’s a testament to the work we’ve been doing for months around the metroplex promoting instant film.  On Sunday, when I created the new event page for our upcoming PolaWalk at Klyde Warren Park in February, within 24 hours, we had 30+ people who had signed up to join us.   This special community of instant photographers is growing exponentially and I’m really excited to see how it will progress over the next year.

-Justin