Thursday, June 09, 2011

every camera i own: the pop cam. guest photographer: my seven-month old nephew

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Guest photographer Julien 

A subset of the 21st Century toy camera revival is the multi-lens 35mm camera. My 1990s-era Nickelodeon Photo Blaster uses four lenses, each of which is used to take a single frame at a time, but that is an anomaly among this type of toy. The Pop Cam uses its four lenses to take four pictures in the space of a second, which can create a Muybridgean effect when trained on a moving object. The Pop Cam adds the wrinkle of tinting each of the four frames a different hue, akin to a late career Warhol.

Releasing the shutter on four lenses in the space of a second creates a distinct whirr, like the sound of crickets that mate by taking pictures of each other with their legs. Or so I suppose.

I've used my Pop Cam, a gift from V., once before - here's one of the National Zoo's pandas, each pop hue coloring its black and white emotions from envy to peace, or something.



I feel I can't write another word today (I wrote about 1400 yesterday) so I'll let the pictures write the rest of the thousand or maybe a few dozen.

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Burger King drive-thru, Front Royal, Virginia
This photograph merits deserves explanation and kudos. I handed the Pop Cam to my nephew last weekend. He was transfixed by the pop colors and circles, and possibly by its taste, as he chewed on the rounded plastic edges. As he was playing with it I heard that chirping cricket sound. This isn't the first picture Julien has made - he took a few with my iPhone a few weeks ago - but this was his inaugural foray into the world of analog:

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Self-portrait by Julien.

Take a bow kiddo.

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2 comments:

Harry Snowden said...

Great post. I saw those cameras around but never gave them a second look.

pat said...

Thanks Harry!