A polaroid a day keeps on keeping on

May 5, 2008 4:53 PM

MetaFilter's own dirtdirt has been taking a polaroid photograph every day since July 14th, 2002. That's 2114 images as of today. He has other cool sets on his flickr page, my favorite being his pictures of school lunches.
posted by Kattullus (42 comments total)

Here's dirtdirt talking about Polaroids.
posted by Kattullus at 4:55 PM on May 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Cool stuff.

dirtdirt: Are you at the point yet of using FP-100C? Any feelings on the difference between the two?
posted by pokermonk at 5:01 PM on May 5, 2008

So, chocolate milk is the drink of choice.
posted by bigmusic at 5:03 PM on May 5, 2008

The school lunches are stomach churning. Great stuff!
posted by ColdChef at 5:07 PM on May 5, 2008

Enchilada Day was my favorite.
Nice work, dd!
posted by Dizzy at 5:12 PM on May 5, 2008

i bought a polaroid a few years ago. Another one, that is. And damn if I didn't suck at taking pictures and the revisit to the novelty of childhood wore off like finding an old plastic handheld blip football game. But it's so wonderful to see when somebody has some skill.

Bravo, dirtdirt.
posted by cashman at 5:13 PM on May 5, 2008

Those school lunches are actually not as bad as I remember mine being in elementary school. The veggies are a little bit sad-looking, but they at least look edible. I don't even remember anything approaching that kind of quality being placed on my tray.
posted by !Jim at 5:14 PM on May 5, 2008

Damn, I'm impressed.

I've been trying to take a picture every day for a month now (it's part of my 101 goals in 1001 days), and I'm finding it to be surprisingly hard. I've already missed one. It's not that it's hard taking a picture, but it's hard to continue to find things to photograph on days where it's my usual routine.

So doing so for over 2000 days... that's truly incredible.
posted by evilangela at 5:14 PM on May 5, 2008

Pretty cool. My favorite Polaroid photos are of slide rules, black and white TVs, and 8 tracks.
posted by Tube at 5:16 PM on May 5, 2008

Nice. Save the polaroids!
posted by johannahdeschanel at 5:17 PM on May 5, 2008

I got to page two of the thumbnails and not one of the photographs had caught my attention. I carried on... Poor photographs which are not made any better by their frequency or medium I'm afraid. I shudder to think what 2000+ must have cost.
posted by fire&wings at 5:23 PM on May 5, 2008

I enjoy the intangible tenderness in his photography. Nice to see him get this kind of recognition.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:25 PM on May 5, 2008

In related news -- Gone in an Instant - "Top photographers are angry over Polaroid’s fade to black."

"'Now what the hell am I supposed to do?' asks John Waters, who’s shot a Polaroid of each person who’s come into his apartment since 1992—friends, interviewers, deliverymen, everyone. 'Digital isn’t instant gratification, and those cameras don’t make that sexy sound.' Waters, too, is hoarding film. 'What are wardrobe departments supposed to do?' he continues. 'How else will they keep costume continuity shots? And has anybody thought about the poor home-porno enthusiasts? Are they supposed to now risk arrest by taking some memory disk to the drugstore to get printed? The world is a terrible place without Polaroid.'"

posted by ericb at 5:26 PM on May 5, 2008

Woah! I'm on MetaFilter!

Pokermonk: actually, I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, but I far prefer FP100c at this point. It's got luscious color, and a nicer finish (not quite gloss, but not as sandy as 669/690), and the prints don't curl up. That said, currently I am using UVID (IDUV? I can't remember)
which is a Polaroid film parallel to 669 that has an invisible tamper-resistant watermark on it which I stocked up on when it was half price at Office Depot.com.

Poor photographs which are not made any better by their frequency or medium I'm afraid is an excellent line that I have now made the tagline for that set on Flickr. I hope you don't mind. No hard feelings.

Thanks for the love Kattullus!
posted by dirtdirt at 5:39 PM on May 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Won't somebody think of the home-porno enthusiasts?
posted by hjo3 at 5:40 PM on May 5, 2008

Love the school lunches.

Wait.

Let me rephrase.

Love the photographs of the school lunches. The lunches themselves I'm perfectly happy to continue avoiding.
posted by dersins at 5:50 PM on May 5, 2008

Damn...dirtdirt, you put all other PADs to shame. Great stuff. Sadly, in related news...
posted by VicNebulous at 5:51 PM on May 5, 2008

The Internet : Where one's obsessive compulsions can bring you fame and glory.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:01 PM on May 5, 2008

The lunches at your school look amazingly like the lunches at my school. The pizza especially.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 6:06 PM on May 5, 2008

Have you seen the movie "Smoke", dirtdirt? (Gee, I feel terrible calling you that.)I'm not making an allusion to one of your sets (I'm a smoker...); Harvey Keitel's character in the movie takes a picture of the same intersection, from the same spot for years on end to record the story of his neighborhood through the ebb and flow of the people in his neighborhood....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 6:10 PM on May 5, 2008

I saw Smoke roughly when it came out, and really liked it. I didn't make the connection with my Polaroids until much later. Related? Probably. But not in any conscious way. I've seen the film several times since then.

As a matter of fact If I were to start this all over again today I'd probably put more of a limit on it, like Augie did. But, at this point, why bother?

My favorite "picture every day" project, by far, is Noah Kaline, who has been taking a self portrait every day since the dawn of time. The video of it is breathtaking.
posted by dirtdirt at 6:22 PM on May 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Wow! Awesome. I don't know whether dirtdirt's prolificacy inspires me or makes me jealous. So, I'll just throw a few of my Polaroid transfers into the mix.

The school lunch photos are fantastic. What's weird is, they look pretty much the same as when I went to school many, many (many) years ago. Funny that I actually looked forward to lunch! Without the context of hunger and a break from class, they look absolutely revolting.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 6:24 PM on May 5, 2008

sloppy joes, sloppy sloppy joes.


_{where are they? 60 lunches and no extra sloppy joes?}
posted by clearly at 6:31 PM on May 5, 2008

wow. dirtdirt, that noah kaline video is amazing.

....and your own photos are really fabulous too!
posted by CitizenD at 6:37 PM on May 5, 2008

I've always loved the Noah Kaline video. Here's one by JK Keller, with 8 years worth of photos, and a consistent background, which gives it an interesting look.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 6:46 PM on May 5, 2008

Wasn't Matt doing something like this? As I remember it was very cool.
posted by caddis at 6:52 PM on May 5, 2008

school lunches is great. even after they start mostly repeating, there's a few different rare ones thrown in. keeps ya clickin'.
posted by snofoam at 6:52 PM on May 5, 2008

shameless self-link: pic-a-day but I've only been going for 4 months. Interesting twist: One Month, One Prime. Galleries of all participants.

Though I guess "one prime" is uninteresting to a polaroid user with the fixed field of view...
posted by polyglot at 6:57 PM on May 5, 2008

I just want to commend everyone in this thread for having the self control to not blurt out "Whaa? School Lunches? What are you doing every day with school lunches?"

Myself, I'm ashasmed to admit I could not help but do that. And google dirtdirt alot. And finedout that he is indeed a teacher and not part of an evil science project to inject school lunches into other realms. So, kudos!
posted by cavalier at 7:00 PM on May 5, 2008

Great post!

The school lunches look so tidy. Kudos to the lunch ladies for being so careful about their work. I remember my school lunches being very sloppy-looking, which of course lessened their already questionable appeal.
posted by amyms at 7:04 PM on May 5, 2008

And find out that he is indeed a teacher and not part of an evil science project to inject school lunches into other realms.

Well the cover story is working.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 7:10 PM on May 5, 2008

So what's the story with the lunches? You actually eat that stuff, dirtdirt?
posted by puke & cry at 7:17 PM on May 5, 2008

Former schoolteacher. I was only in it for the lunches.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:19 PM on May 5, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

What can I say? I like institutional food. Schools, hospitals, airplanes, machines. I used to buy frozen fish sandwiches out of the vending machine in the basement of my job at Harper Collins in New York City.

Jesus, you read something like that and it sinks in how disgusting that is. Basement vending machine fish sandwich.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:22 PM on May 5, 2008

Have you ever considered moving to Japan? I imagine you could really get into bento boxes.
posted by Dave Faris at 7:42 PM on May 5, 2008

Is not ALL food, in the end, institutional?

I'll put the bong down now.
posted by Dizzy at 7:46 PM on May 5, 2008

You should try prison food.
posted by puke & cry at 7:47 PM on May 5, 2008

I just knew these were in Austin. Great project, dirtdirt. Where did you teach?
posted by Faux Real at 9:41 PM on May 5, 2008

Damn, dirtdirt. Thank you.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 11:25 PM on May 5, 2008

I want to hug and squeeze Fuzzy Skinner alot for pretending I'm smart and fixing all my typos.

After looking at more of the photos I also want to commend dirtdirt for having the patience and resolve to continue doing this. It's neat!
posted by cavalier at 4:43 AM on May 6, 2008

The school lunches are from when I was a special ed teaching assistant at Casis Elementary. My year of teaching was at a fairly out-there (in excellent ways) charter elementary school. No cafeteria there, though.

The most recent 1000 or so are in Austin, the previous 1000 or so are in New York City.
posted by dirtdirt at 5:36 AM on May 6, 2008

I want to hug and squeeze Fuzzy Skinner a lot for pretending I'm smart and fixing all my typos.

Typos? Why, I see no typos at all. There must have been some kind of parsing problem on hitting the "post" button.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 7:18 AM on May 6, 2008