Some Sad Photographic News New 55 and Hedrich Blessing - Closed!

As anyone who visits my site knows my posting has become a lot more infrequent. Time commitments in my life have reduced the amount of available time for my photography interests. Today I came to check my site, look over links and generally make sure things were still working. In checking my inspiration and links section I discovered that during my absence two of my links had stopped working. The first was my link to New 55 Film. They were a start up Kickstarter company that was trying to bring to market a new peal apart instant film for 4x5 polaroid camera's.


I was very excited about the potential new product as there may be no manufacturers of instant film remaining. As a large format camera owner instant film was how I learned the craft of architectural photography. The process was fairly simple. Set up your shot. Take all the necessary preparations and then shoot some test shot with instant film. When Polaroid went out of business in pretty much destroyed the financial viability of the large format camera for many professionals as it requires some degree of certainty that you have the shots you want or are being paid to produce.


New 55 was a valiant effort to return an instant 4x5 film to the market and at the same time provide a viable negative along with a print. They had done it. They had gotten the product design pretty well in place and were delivering product. But the whole operation could never scaled up to move past a craft operation. For them to be financially viable as a going concern they needed to make production equipment that was more efficient, required less hand labor and had higher levels of consistency. Having watched them struggle and fail was sad especially in light of the analog resurgence that seems to be taking place elsewhere in such things ad vinyl records and typewriters.


I was also saddened to learn that the famous Hedrich Blessing photo studio in Chicago closed its doors. Several of it's remaining photographers have started a new studio but the legacy of world famous photographs from the famous Chicago company has sadly come to and end. The archives have been transferred and I have put a link up. See the information and inspiration section of the blog.


The photography market place continues to be one of ruthless change and competition. There is nothing standing still in this world, especially not in the photography industry.

Some Recent New Images from St. Louis

Here are some recent new images from around the St. Louis area. These images did not make the cut for a recent photo competition/exhibit at the Sheldon Gallery celebrating the cities 250 year anniversary.
 

Stan Musial Veteran's Memorial Bridge

Railroad Trestles

Library

Roberts Tower 1

Roberts Tower 2

Giro 1

Giro 2

Giro 3

In Formation

5 Arches

Modern Art in Snow

Still Waiting for New Instant Film

When will the New 55 project actually have a product? When I began to dabble in analog film photography again after a long 20 year break I quickly realized that the world had changed. In the old days commercial photographers would use instant film to verify that their composition, exposure and camera where as expected. This would give them a high degree of predictability insurance against the human goofs that can and do occur during a photo shoot. Using the "Polaroid test shot" was the way I learned to prep for a shot which could sometimes take hours to compose, focus, light and adjust. As the saying goes time is money and while not the least expensive thing in the world Polaroid film was far cheaper then taking everything down, going home, waiting a couple of days for the lab and then finding out that your shot isn't any good. While I was not shooting for profit or gain this helped prevent the inevitable disappointment from having a lot of bad sheets of film. The products and materials that simply were no longer available in the market became a real obstacle.

So I have been following with some interest the development of "New 55". It is a skunk works project that has been attempting to develop not just a replacement for Polaroid 55 black and while instant 4x5 film but an improved product. One that would produce not only a good posative but also a good working negative. With Fuji leaving the 4x5 instant filme market what choice do we have but hope that some other creative entrepreneur is successful at bringing new and improved products. Unfortunately while they seem to be making good technical progress they are finding funding and capital to launch the actaul production of the new product very difficult. This means that what looked to be just around the corner a few months ago is pushed out even further. I will post a link to their blog here, look to the end and also place it in the resources section so that if you like you can read the actual post by the developers themselves. We can only hope that as the economy improves someone with capital will find this a viable investment. New 55 Instant Film Blog

Stay tuned and keep your fingers crossed.