About a month ago, I was browsing the internet and came across Paul Giambarba’s website. Giambarba, is the graphic designer that created Polaroid’s iconic product identity. I read an article about the integral role he played in the branding of Polaroid and after reading it, I was so inspired by the designs he created, I rummaged around the house for materials and recreated one.
Since I’ve been back from our recent trip to Aspen, I’ve been pondering what to photograph and have had the itch to use the RB67 with some Impossible film. I picked up some PX-70 NIGO this month, and had a few images left from a pack I shot at the ranch. With the NIGO film, I’ve been carefully sneaking peeks at the colors as I’ve been shooting it, and I knew that an orange-framed photo about to surface.
I started to look through old Polaroid ads online and came across a strikingly simple image of a folded-up SX-70 partially pulled out of its case. A couple months ago, I picked up a first model SX-70 w/ case at an estate sale and knew that I had the equipment to recreate this image. The lighting aspect of it is quite simple. You only need one flash/strobe & a snoot w/ grids to light the subject.
I put together a quick studio setup and placed the camera on a piece of black foam core board. I boomed up a flash with a homemade snoot/grid and I dialed in the exposure with the D700. Once I had the light just right, I went to position the RB, but it turned out to be a little tricky. Of course when viewing the image, it was reversed. But even more challenging, because I was shooting vertically, the camera/subject was actually upside down when I was looking at it.
It took some time before I was ready to pull the trigger, but when I finally was, I did the Impossible/RB67 shuffle and created this image.
It seemed it wasn’t complete without text, so I photoshopped a scan from something Impossible I had in my house and overlaid it in CS. You can see the image here.
From my limited experience with TIP & flash, I am enjoying the level of control you have over the highlights in a ‘studio setting’. Metering scenes and knowing exactly how much juice I’m giving the negative always makes for a more consistent outcome. I look forward to the day that Impossible creates their own analog camera and I really hope it has manual settings and flash-sync capability …
Thanks for reading.
-Justin