The 2017 Polacon took place Friday, September 29-Sunday October 1, 2017. Sadly, I wasn’t able to take part in much of it, but I did enjoy a guided photowalk around Downtown Denton, TX, and a brunch after with a regular from the Dallas Photo Walk group. Next year, if I can keep it in my head, maybe I’ll get to more of the events next year.
For the Polacon, I shot one pack of Impossible Project Color (produced in January 2017) in the Polaroid Impulse SE and two packs of Instax in the LC-Anstax. I was a bit worried about the Impossible stuff: it took a loooong time to develop (30+ minutes), but they came out fine in the end. And I had the exposure off on the Instax: after last weekend in Waxahachie, where everything came out underexposed,* I set the ISO to 100 and this time everything came out way overexposed. I realized it partway into the second pack, and then switched to flash, so everything was underexposed… Agh.
But it was a good time anyway.
We met up at the Denton County Courthouse, walked around it a bit, and then walked down to look at some street art.**
Upon shooting the statue/arch thing, I realized that it’s a monument to the Confederacy… Astaghfirullah. InshaAllah it’ll be coming down soon. The inscription on it reads something like (I’m paraphrasing: it was even worse than this) “dedicated to our brave boys who fought bravely to protect the southern way of life.” SubhanAllah. Astaghfirullah. La ilaha il Allah. Allahu Akbar.
Anyway.
After that, we went into Recycled Records and shot around there for awhile.
I’m fairly happy with those two Polaroids: the lens on the Impulse SE is sharp, and the color on the Impossible Project stuff is really nice. And I’m really happy that I made it out of Recycled without buying anything (sorry!).
The photowalk sorta ended there, and people dispersed to wait for festivities to start later in the day. Clint and I walked down to Rusty Taco for a bit of brunch, and then he went off to more Polacon fun, and I went off to chores.
I kinda took the long way home and stopped to see my dad at work. He’s getting ready to retire and I don’t know how often I’ll get to see him then, so I need to take advantage of his job-enforced captivity, and be thankful for whatever time we have together.
All in all, it was a fun way to spend Saturday morning. I just wish I’d been a bit more aware of all the fun stuff that went on, and been able to take part in more of it. There was a photowalk at the opening night of the State Fair on Friday night; lectures, workshops, a swap meet, and other fun stuff Saturday, and some other activities and a gallery opening or something on Sunday, so plenty to go around, plus “celebrities” like Jon Wilkening and Nate Matos were in town, and I could’ve said hello and maybe got some books signed… Oh well. Allah knows best, and I did have some film to develop, clothes to wash and other chores to do, and desperately needed to spend some time with my darling, adorable wife.
If you missed this year’s Polacon, God willing it’ll roll around next year, and by then, the new Polaroid Originals film and camera will be out and Impossible will mostly be gone. I have one more pack left, and will probably do an a/b comparison with it and the new i-type stuff from Polaroid Originals here in a few weeks when my preordered OneStep2 comes in.
*EDIT: after writing this, I realized I haven’t shared anything from that walk… look forward to that later in the week, maybe.
** I have some 35mm and 120 photographs that I’ll share later, InshaAllah.
