PIONEERTOWN

Last weekend I went on a Los Angeles Group flickrmeet to Pioneertown and Joshua Tree National Park. For this blog post I'm sharing photos from Pioneertown. If you'd like to check out photos other people took on the meet, check out this discussion thread on flickr. Next time I post, I'll share my Joshua Tree shots.

Here's a description of Pioneertown's cinematic history according to to www.pioneertown.com:

"Pioneertown was built in 1946 as a movie set for western movies, including the movies of Gene Autry, The Cisco Kid, with Duncan Renaldo, Annie Oakley with Gail Davis, Judge Roy Bean with Edgar Buchanan, Range Rider with Jock O. Mahoney, and Buffalo Bill Jr. with Dick Jones. The movie set was to provide a place for the actors to live, and have their homes used as part of a movie set. Some of the original investors in the town were Roy Rogers, who also built thePioneer Bowl, Sons of the Pioneers, which the town was named after, Dick Curtis who was a professional villian in old movies, Bud Abbott, Russell Hayden, who played Lucky on the Hopalong Cassidy series, Louella Parsons the Hollywood gossip columnist and Philip N. Krasne: The Man Who Saved Pioneertown. Mane Street is private property and is always open to courteous pedestrians."

Pioneertown is only a two hour drive from L.A. We were graced by the beautiful presence of fresh snow all over Pioneertown.



Me on "Mane" Street. Photo by Laurie Thomson.


While most of the group wandered through the Pioneertown, I found myself drawn to the Pioneertown Motel in the back and the snow covered cars and landscape behind the Motel.













This is the motel.


The motel was very cool and had a lot of character. Each room has it's own kitchenette. It's definitely the kind of place I'd like to stay at in the future - quiet, peaceful, nostalgic.



A beautiful tree on Mane Street.


A funny snow woman by the motel.

This snow woman reminds me of Dustin Hoffman in drag as Dorothy Michaels in the classic early 80's romantic comedy "Tootsie"

It was pretty much a ghost town at Pioneertown - we were the only tourists. The only other people I saw were staying at the motel. A few of those were out walking their doggies out in the snow.

This cute doggie named Gracie was sunbathing in front of her two mommies' motel room.









As the group was getting ready to leave Pioneertown, I met these three amigos.



These guys were kind of like Jackass or Dumb and Dumber come to life. The guy on the left was a groom to be. On the way to get married, he got his car stuck in the mud. While working to get the car dug out of the mud with a shovel, he split the tux pants he was supposed to wear to the ceremony. Once they got the car out, the trio did some pre wedding celebrating with Pabst beers. This was just before 11am. The last thing I heard the groom say was something about he should have known better about getting the car stuck because he grew up driving that road and that his wife to be was going to be pissed and he probably wasn't going to be "getting any" tonight. At least he had a sense of humor about it. Good luck with the marriage buddy.

Photo credits © Lydia Marcus 2010 / www.lydiamarcus.com
Photographed January 23, 2010 in Pioneertown, CA

EMBRACING THE NEW

Since I have to brace myself for the very real possibility that I won't be able to get any of the Polaroid integral films (the kind that shoots out of the front of the camera and develops in less than a minute) after this year when Polaroid ceases production, I've decided to embrace the sole instant camera technology that will be in production - the Fuji Instax camera and film. I still plan on using my Polaroids for "important" stuff, but at least with the Instax I can shoot with abandon and not wonder if I'm wasting a shot. Sure it still costs about a buck a shot, so that limits my abandon (like shooting any kind of film does - you have to be a little more thoughtful about shooting choices vs being able to shoot hundreds at a time with digital).

Fuji makes several kinds of Instax cameras and films (the mini format actually works in the old Polaroid Mio cameras - but alas, I don't have a Mio). I decided to make my first step with the Fuji Instax 200 camera and the Fuji Instax Wide Instant Film because the size/shape is pretty close to 600 and spectra. I actually dig the wide picture format - I think it will be pretty good for landscapes and cars. I look at a 24" widescreen iMac for hours, I watch widescreen movies, so it makes sense to shoot in a wide format too. The image rectangle is exactly 4" in width and almost 2.5" in height. The full size of the shot is a little over 4x3. The actual photos look exactly like what you'd expect to see from a Polaroid camera just in a different size/shape. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the color rendition - it's pretty vivid - maybe even a little more than a Polaroid. The sucky thing for me is that there's no exact focusing like on my better Polaroid cameras (like my SX-70 Alpha and SLR 680 SE), nope, this is just like any of the run of the mill cheapie Polaroids where you have to pay attention to feet - or in the case of the Instax, freakin' meters! There's a button that changes the lens focus from .9-3 meters to 3 meters to infinity. I've taken a few out of focus shots at the .9-3 stage, so I guess I'm standing less than .9 meters and didn't realize - silly me - I guess I need to bring out a measuring tape to make sure! The whole meters thing throws me off, so today I actually converted the numbers and printed out a little label to put next to the numbers to recall the conversions. .9 = 2.9 feet and 3 = 9.8 feet.

The Fuji Instax cameras aren't normally sold in the U.S., but Mel Pierce camera in Hollywood has them on back order and carries the wide film. Most people get the film and cameras on ebay. There's also some Canadian online resellers that have them. I bought mine from Lomography.com - they specialize in all kinds of lo-fi cameras like Holgas and Dianas, cheap Russian plastic cameras and their own brand of Lomo cameras that have fisheye lenses, multiple lenses (actionsampler, colorspash). The Fuji Instax 200 plus 10 boxes of expired film (100 exposures) was $150 dollars plus 7 bucks shipping.

The Fuji Instax 200 looks like some insane, clunky toy camera.No one out in public has seen me shoot with it yet, but I suspect when they do, I will get some looks and probably questions. The flash can be turned on and off, but if the camera thinks the light is too low, it will put the flash on. This kind of sucks for taking shots of neon at night, but oh well. I guess I can stick some black gaffers tape on the flash if I'm desperate. I wish that the camera had a self timer shot because there's no way I can do a self portrait and be in focus - my arms length is not .9 meters!

















All Fuji Instax photos by Lydia Marcus shot May 19, 2008 - May 21, 2009 in the San Fernando Valley