Polaroid (宝丽来, ポラロイド, 폴라로이드)

Nowadays anyone with a smartphone can take a picture of anything with their phone and have a digital copy instantly available to send to anyone on earth, a stunning technology that I wouldn't have imagined just 30 years ago when I was 8 years ago. There was a whole process of taking pictures including having a camera that's not your phone, taking the film to a one-hour photo place, and then getting those photos back in an envelope. Before getting those photos back, (gasp for all the Generation Z and younger people) you didn't know how the picture looked! It was all a mystery, the film was inside the camera and you couldn't just open it up and look at it, they were negatives that had to be developed in a dark room. Photography was an art. I remember having something called a "one-time use camera" on my first international trip to China when I was 14 years old, I could only get 24 pictures total on the camera and if I ran out, that was it. Was that limiting? Yes, definitely, it cramped my style, but also it taught me how to ration and cherish the pictures I did take, almost like not overeating or budgeting my finances. It was a wild time, the 1990s and early 2000s when I came of age. Then there was something called Polaroid, which I didn't really use much but I knew was an instant camera that spit out the image "right away" (even back then "right away" was still 1 minute or so, unlike nowadays kids want everything "instantly." It was like dial-up internet variety of cameras: you took the picture, the camera spit out a small square, you shake it a little bit (shake it like a polaroid picture.... Outkast song "Hey Ya") and the picture just magically showed up. The first Polaroid was sold starting in 1948, invented by Edwin Land, a nice trivia fact. Nowadays despite the prevalent use of smartphones, it's encouraging to me that Polaroid cameras and photos still are in use; you can buy sleek design Polaroid cameras for $100 or so, and you have limited film. It's like being brought back to the 1990s for me, almost like going to libraries or visting Blockbuster video stores ( I REALLY miss Blockbuster/Hollywood video by the way, just the excitement of looking at all the selections that I could choose from, and finding that one perfect movie that I wanted to watch that weekend. (Nowdays I'm drowned by selection when browsing through Netflix, I imagine having trouble explaining to my 15-year-old self why having the whole universe of movies at my disposal wasn't necessarily a good thing). I like the feel of the Polaroid cameras, the responsibility needed to take a good picture, and that small noise of shutter closing to take the picture and the film sliding out. Some feelings just stay with you forever, like a home-cooked meal or smell of fresh baked cookies. MJ and I found it very refreshing to take pregnancy photos using Polaroid camera, and forgoing a professional photography shoot (this was a big step for MJ, she knows that I'm not into photography as much as her but will go along with it if needed, but she resisted the urge to splurge on someone just shooting her with a big belly). Some prospective parents do want to memorialize this time pre-pregnancy "because you might never have that big of a belly again), assuming of course you aren't having another baby, but also I think it's somewhat awkward to take photos because the mother has likely and justifiably...gained a few pounds. Might not be the best time to be taking photos, and if I had to choose between pre-pregancy photos without baby and post-pregancy photos WITH baby, of course baby photos win out. So Polaroid it was, and kind of symbolic of imes changing and the passing of an era, MJ and I turning from married people with no kids to parents for the rest of our lives, from the instant camera Polaroid age to the digital age. Hopefully our parent stage will go the way of cameras, the newer versions are more an upgrade, faster, and get more done, but once in a while we can look back at our Polaroid selves and reminisce about what we had back then.