Fall ‘Roid Week 2009 dates announced – Nov 2-6!

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

It’s almost that time again! Polaroid Week Fall 2009 will be November 2–6. Participating is easy: make some pictures on any instant film and post them to the ‘Roid Week 2009 group on Flickr (free accounts work).

Don’t be scared off now that Polaroid means horrendously expensive, you can play on the cheap: Fuji still makes really nice peel-apart instant film in both color and black and white that are cheaper than Polaroid was when it was in production. If you need a camera, you can grab a Holga-like, zone focus Polaroid Super Shooter or Super Shooter Plus on eBay for under 10 bucks, or a rangefinder-focused Automatic 100 [pic] or Automatic 250 [pic] for $25–30.

Here are the ‘Roid Week guidelines:

About ‘Roid Week Fall 2009

Hello!

POLAROID WEEK is a bi-annual celebration of all things instant!

Here are the simple rules:

* It’s five days. Monday thru Friday.

* Pool opens at 6:00 am on Monday, Eastern Standard Time.

* Pool closes at 12:00 am on Friday (technically, Saturday), Pacific Standard Time.

* Members can post up to 3 photos a day.

* Though we call it “Polaroid Week,” any instant film is fine.

* No Poladroids! You have your own group to play in. This is a film only group.

* Post photos you haven’t posted on Flickr before. Give us something new. We will unceremoniously delete all photos that do not meet this requirement.

* And give us something good. This is our seasonal eye candy. Make it sweet.

2 new Holga converter lenses & fisheye viewfinder

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Holga just officially released two plastic lenses that attach over the existing Holga lens to change the focal length

The two tele-converter lenses, models HT-25 (tele lens) and HW-05(wide lens) fit onto you holga and either lengthen(HT-25) or shorten (HW-05) the focal length, therefore creating a tele or wide lens.

Another new release is a fisheye viewfinder that sits on top of your holga enabling you to see the subject ‘fisheyed’ before taking the photo. This viewfinder is a companion piece to the holga fisheye lens.

More info at Holgablog

All your Burning Man photos belong to Burning Man

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Problem: people get naked at the Burning Man festival. People take pictures of them and post and/or sell them on the Internet.

Burning Man’s "solution": they steal the copyright (PDF) to all photos taken at the festival.

The Burning Man spokesperson says:

"Our main concern in enacting the policy was to be able to create this weeklong cultural bubble where people can express themselves without worrying about their image being plastered all over the Internet," she said, reiterating that Burning Man wants to be able to take down these images if the poster refuses.

"There are a lot of nude people out here, and this protects the school teacher from Iowa who doesn’t wasn’t want to appear on a porn site," she said. "I acknowledge that the copyright law is heavy-handed way of handling this, but it’s the only tool we have right now.

More here at The Legal Satyricon and here at XBIZ (which is a porn industry news site and may have NSFW ads).

I’m not a lawyer, but I think a saner approach would be to have a photo agreement that states that you aren’t allowed to do whatever they object to, and specify a very heavy remedy if you do it anyway.

Via Jonathan Block

Interview with toy camera photographer Larry Treadway

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Tread ain’t bad. He starts:

Analog photography is the disconnect from my digital work life. Bad plastic cameras are my kind of rebellion to the glut of computers, monitors and peripherals required for me to make a living. I’ve tried to be an artist of some sort most of my life, from photography to a stint screaming in a loud punk rock band I’ve had that need to express something…basically I’ve failed at a lot of different things. Trying to be a decent father, Internet instigator and creative-type using photography as a tool to help that along…

Continue reading on Petapixel

Check out Tread’s work at his web site, gotreadgo, and here on Flickr.