Jazz Age Lawn Party - West Side Story - Instax

Super 8 + 16mm + Polaroids

September 3, 2019

Back at it again with this year’s trip to the marvelous Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor’s Island in New York City. For those unaware, the Jazz Age Lawn Party is a yearly event taking place on a weekend in both in June and August where you travel out to the really beautiful island off the southern tip of Manhattan and have a day filled with jazz, champagne and dancing. Everyone dresses up in their finest 1920’s threads (some of it is genuine vintage clothing from the time period!) and enjoy a day relaxing.

I always go with the amazing Penumbra Foundation’s tintype booth they run every year. They shoot actual tintypes on large format 4x5 and 5x7 cameras. I document their booth as well as the event on Super 8 and this year I added some 16mm into the mix as well. The Super 8 was B&W Tri-X self-processed at MONO NO AWARE, a cinema arts non-profit I work with in Brooklyn, and the 16mm was color negative shot on a Bolex H16 and processed/scanned at the new Kodak NYC lab! You can see some of the footage from the day below!

A fun little snippet in there is when part of the cast of the upcoming Broadway show and Steven Spielberg directed film adaptation of West Side Story. Probably around 8 of the cast members were at the event just enjoying the day and couldn’t help but get a tintype of the crew to immortalize the day. They were a lot of fun and really loved their tintype. I later caught a portrait of two of them on some instant film which is featured at the top of this post.

Aside from documenting on motion film, I always can’t resist bringing a few still cameras to take some portraits because the outfits are always incredible. I brought along a Polaroid 110B with some Instax Wide film as well as a modified Instax Wide 300. Bringing along cameras that were at least closer to the correct time period (albeit still from the 50s technically) is a treat because they always get a lot of looks and questions as I walk around with them.

Also, while helping out the Penumbra Foundation with their booth, the tintype studio manager, Jolene Lupo, and I devised a very McGyver’d way to shoot a “mug shot” type double exposure on a single plate. Took a lot of ingenuity and several extra hands but the results were exactly as we’d hope for! This is the flipped scan since with a tintype, everything comes out inverted.

In the end, it was a hot but fun weekend to test out lots of different cameras and chat with some really inspiring artists working on their craft. And be sure to check out the previous years I’ve gone: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Fall Finger Lakes Getaway // Super 8 + Polaroids + 35mm

October 31, 2018

As is tradition, my wife and her best friend planned a weekend getaway to somewhere in the Northeast to celebrate their birthdays. Been going strong about 4-5 years now and is always somewhere new. So packed my backpack with my Super 8, a Polaroid camera and a 35mm camera (and some clothes) and we set out to the Finger Lakes region in Upstate NY for the weekend. You can see the Super 8 I shot below!

First of all, this AirBnB the 10 of us stayed in was unreal! This beautiful Victorian-esque house that looked like it was from a magazine. Would be a great spot for a photoshoot or small wedding. Not to mention the Airstream in the backyard fully decked out for taking on the road! Oh and a super rad abandoned barn as well.

I brought along some expired Kodak Ektachrome for my Super 8 camera which came out wonderfully and I’m so excited that Ektachrome has now returned to production from Kodak. Projecting color Super 8 film is such a awesome experience. Once I was back in NYC, I hand processed the film with the help of Steve Cossman of MONO NO AWARE at the Gowanus Community Darkroom. Really an incredible feeling to process and then immediately see the color reversal images I shot on the lightbox.

Also brought my Polaroid 110B with some expired Polaroid 669 film which always has amazing blue hues and expired Fujifilm FP-3000B. Fit in my custom CB-70 back for the 110B so I could shoot some Polaroid Originals B&W film. And tucked in my little Olympus XA and some Fuji Pro400H to top it all off. A good spread of film types and formats to play around with. The 669 I used for some landscape and portraits which I was really happy with. It’s such a unique and interesting film to use. It’s got a bit of a reputation for aging like a fine wine. Then the 3000B and Polaroid Originals film I used for some interiors of our awesome place. Pretty faded but it all worked! Below are the prints and the negatives of the FP-3000B film.

While we were there, we had to hit up a farm with a corn maze and eat some cider donuts and hot cider of course. Pet a llama. The usual stuff. Then hung out at our funky home and before heading home, stopped by a little town right off one of the lakes. Upstate NY is definitely a gorgeous area in the fall! Just shot some more Super 8 and film last weekend at this year’s trip and I’m excited to process it!

Britt & Kyle - Wedding // Super 8

October 17, 2018

Last winter, I got to shoot another very special wedding to me, my own sister! I actually shot both Super 8 and digital (Alarming I know!) during the wedding which took place on the beaches of Key West, Florida! You can see their wedding film below!

Packing light as I had just come from a trip to Argentina, I arrived with my wife and just a small backpack. But given that it’s on a beach, tons of clothing isn’t really necessary. This was a small, intimate ceremony with just close family and friends on the beach and officiated by our dad. Given the casual nature of the wedding, it was easy and fun to roam around with my sister and her future husband and capture the day.

I shot the Super 8 wedding film and the digital photos as a gift to my wonderful and sometimes feisty sister. I love her and was happy to help in any way I could to make her wedding day special. Enjoy the film and the rare occasion for me to post digital photos here!

Jazz Age Lawn Party 2016 // Super 8 + 8mm + Polaroids

June 10, 2017

Michael Arenella's Jazz Age Lawn Party is truly one of the most fun events around to shoot. The costumes are brilliant, the dancers are bunch of fun, and capturing it all on vintage cameras couldn't be a more perfect match.

Last year I had the pleasure of shooting for the Penumbra Foundation and the Penumbra Tintype Studio which had a booth at the event, shooting portraits on bona fide tintypes. I was brought on to both document their process as well as the event overall, using black and white Super 8 film (Tri-X for those who care). Aside from bringing a Super 8 camera, my trusty Nizo 801 Macro, I also brought along my Polaroid SLR680 and my Polaroid Land Camera 250 to try and capture the weekend in many different ways. A special appearance was my newly acquired Keystone 8mm camera, courtesy of my now-wife's grandfather. I'm sure it hasn't had a roll of film run through it in 40 years so that was pretty exciting to test out. A myriad of cameras all together. The film below is a mixture of the Super 8 as well as the Regular 8mm. I'm sure you'll be able to tell the difference with the Super 8 being much sharper although I think that's also due to Fomapan being a rather muddy film for 8mm.

Nizo 801M & Keystone K35 8mm | Kodak Tri-X & Fomapan R100

It was quite a weekend. Possibly one of the hottest of the summer and spending it outside all day was a doozy. With that said, I still had a lot of fun grinning and bearing it with the Penumbra crew and was utterly fascinated by their amazing tintypes being created in mere minutes; the "original Polaroid" as they called it. Other than observing the tintypes shot by Jolene and Olivia and the Fujiroids being shot on a Graflex Super D by Geoffrey Berliner of the Penumbra Foundation, I strolled around and took footage of different guests, the performers on stage, as well as the amazing choreographed dances by Gregory Moore & The Dreamland Follies.

I also managed to get a nice headshot from Geoffrey which is probably one of the few times I'll ever look nice in a photo. I also took the negative and salvaged it and scanned it on my own and it really is a beautiful negative. Love doing that. Also Dean Chooch Landry was shooting some 4x5s for Penumbra on his own century old Graflex Super and snagged a couple of portraits of me. Pretty fantastic stuff!

Last year when I went, it was just for fun and I casually shot some Super 8 and some black and white Fujifilm FP-3000B on my Land Camera which is an incredibly rare film now due to being discontinued. This year since I was shooting mainly the Penumbra crew on Super 8, I decided to make an effort to take more portraits when shooting my Polaroids. I'm glad that I did because it was fun chatting with the different dolled-up guests and ultimately it landed me a spot in a group show featuring film photography and motion picture film from the Jazz Age Lawn Party at the Gowanus Darkroom, "Portraits from the New Jazz Age" . The show itself was really cool and it was great getting to see other film photographer's work displayed let alone, show some of my own work. Looking forward to the next Jazz Age Lawn Party!

Jazz Age Lawn Party 2015 // Super 8 + Polaroids

June 20, 2016

Having been to Michael Arenella's Jazz Age Lawn Party hosted by his Dreamland orchestra again this year, I figured I'd write a little bit about my time there last year. It truly is a fun day full of fantastic music, great dancing, good food and the best of all, amazing outfits!

Given the time period in which this festival reflects, I figured it would be appropriate to shoot some film while I was there (although the two cameras I used were from the 60s/70s to tell the truth). I shot some black and white Polaroids using my Polaroid Land 250 camera and Fujifilm FP-3000b pack film. The contrast and definition of that film is truly breathtaking, especially given that you can see the developed, instant shot in a mere 15-30 seconds after you yank it out. That's about the fastest developing film ever.

A few funny stories about using that camera, not only did I run into a few other people shooting with the same or similar camera, but there was a man there, whom I now know the name of, Geoffrey Berliner, who works with the Penumbra Foundation in NYC, who was also shooting with the same peel-apart type film but the color type (FP-100C). The fascinating part was he was using a camera truly out of that era, a very old Graflex camera that he adapted to use pack film. Those results were absolutely breathtaking. That film combined with a giant lens produced results like no other. I also stumbled upon a few other people with Polaroid Land cameras which was a treat having other instant enthusiasts around. Of course there were more than a few TLRs or film SLRs but Polaroids are harder to come by.

The last odd story is about a photo I no longer have. Meandering the party near the end of the day, wondering what to do with my final shot, thinking I may use it for a skyline shot aboard the ferry back to Manhattan, a man stopped me and began to eagerly ask questions about the camera. He finally asked if I minded if I took a shot of him and his friends and then offered me $20, which I happily obliged at that point. Ha. At the time, that was about the cost of an entire pack of that film whereas now with it being discontinued, it's about half the cost! Anyways, so I shot a group shot of him and all of his friends in their finest garbs, the photo came out beautifully, and they set off gleefully with their new print. That to me is the magic of Polaroids. Near instant results.

Aside from all of the fun with the Polaroid camera, I also shot a roll of Tri-X Reversal Super 8 film in my Nizo S56 camera. I shot different snippets of the event from the amazing dancing, choreographed performances, the band, the people, and managed to end it all on a fading skyline. Busting that camera out also managed to get some looks and even caused an NYU film professor to stop me and chat about the format and how he wished he brought his. Vintage cameras are always a great talking point and I love when people stop me and want to chat about them.

Jazz Age Lawn Party 2016 - Polaroid Spectra (IP 600 Color Gen2)

This final shot is actually from this year's Jazz Age. Only had one shot left in my Polaroid Spectra camera so saving it for a big group shot seemed like the best use! Such a swell day! Hope to be shooting more film there in the future.

Super 8mm and Polaroid work featured on

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