black and white photography by rob gardiner.

St Martin-in-the-Fields church sits adjacent to Trafalgar Square in London. This is a Polaroid photograph I took of it with a cheap SX-70 camera, then manipulated it with a wooden skewer to get the painterly effect. Photoshop didn’t have much to do with it, except for resizing.

For anyone who has been following my photography, it might come as a surprise to see these photos. I generally work in black and white, and almost never make any adjustments to those photos. To be completely honest, I don’t know what has driven me into trying this out. They are fun to do and very quick, which is an advantage since I’ve been far too busy lately to devote as much time to my black and white photographs as I would normally do. There is also an element of rebellion. Using an archaic (circa 1970s) $10 camera to do manipulations with a $0.01 piece of wood is oddly satisfying in this world where people buy $1,000 cameras and use $500 software to do the similar things. Doing these polaroid manipulations does stoke the creative fire, and I expect to be posting some more black and white stuff very soon.

Yes another SX-70 Polaroid Manipulation. Hopefully you are not getting sick of them.

Green Park, as seen through my Polaroid Manipulated eyes. These gates separate the park from Buckingham Palace. It is not a particularly exciting example of Polaroid Manipulation, but I’ve decided that I’ll publish some of my “non-hits” while I am learning the technique in the hope that it might still be interesting to others.

After doing some experimentation (see my previous few posts), I’ve decided to try to take a photo that looks half decent before attempting manipulation. This is the London Eye as seen from across the Thames. The SX-70 camera is a fixed focal length, it is just a happy coincidence that the Thames is this wide at this point. Strangely, the London sky has been blue quite often recently.

As I’ve said before, this is a SX-70 Polaroid Manipulation. Essentially you take a shot with your Polaroid using TimeZero SX-70 film, wait about 30 minutes, then spend 10 minutes moving the emulsion around using an implement. My chosen implement is a wooden skewer that is ordinarily found in kitchens. I’ve simply scanned it using a cheap flatbed scanner, there is no other Photoshop.