plastic lens

As a photographer I strive to not having a particular style.
Which of course means that it's hard to get assignments.
I hardly get any, other than those I create for myself.
The narrower you define yourself
the likelier you will get work.
They hire you for exactly what you mostly do.
It's safer that way.

To fine tune just one thing and specialize
doesn't really interest me
as I see photography
as language rather than technique.
I prefer to speak many languages.
To make languages up.
I tend to simply make it up and figure it out as I go,
rather than fine tuning a particular approach
or color scheme.
Each situation asks for something different.
In my mind.

Thus I throw in a photo that I took with a simple
plastic polaroid type of camera with a cheap plastic lens.
Printing from the negative.
I did a series of portraits that way.
The film is no longer manufactured.
Whatever stock there might be left is hard to find.

You can do almost anything in Photoshop today.
But nothing you do comes as a surpising gift to you.
You have to figure out each and every imperfection
yourself.
In the days of more manual labor the material
did stuff for you.
Sometimes it made things worse and you had to fight it to
achieve a desirable result.
Other times little sweet accidents happened
that made the work more interesting.
A gift.
I actually try to approach digital
and photoshop that same way.
Which may be futile.