Disposable Camera Photo Book
This post is the first in a series called:
I’m debuting a new series where I will be sharing ideas for creative experiences that create deeper connections with your friends, family and community.
Each post will feature a Game, Gift or Gathering that is an experience I’ve either created and produced myself or is adapted from a beloved classic.
Please borrow or adapt these ideas as needed, and use them to create fun experiences with the people in your life.
If you do, I’d love to feature your work in a future post!
GIFT INSPIRATION STORY
September 2006. After two years of renting closet-sized bedrooms, I moved into a spacious and very affordable sublet on Guerrero Street in the Mission. I was waiting tables and freelancing as a radio producer.
San Francisco hadn’t felt like a place I could settle in until that apartment.
I had moved away from my family on the east coast two years earlier. I was conflicted about it - my grandmother was in her 90s, my sister was having kids and starting her family, and my dad was planning to retire soon.
I visited as often as I could, but I felt I was missing out on all the big changes in their lives. And they were missing out on mine.
Longing is a prime emotional state in which to find creative inspiration.
A friend had suggested I check out www.ineedyouso.com, the portfolio website of a local multidisciplinary artist. The site is now defunct, but you can find it on the Way Back Machine on archive.org.
Everything about it is a prime example of the sincere emo aesthetic that was iconic in the 2000s.
Her work was painfully personal - cringe worthy, some might say. But it was also extremely relatable. It was like reading a friend's journal.
In today’s world, this would do well on Instagram…. or Substack. 😬
She was an ARTIST and she was really throwing it all out there for all to see.
Some noteworthy projects:
She set up a tripod to capture a long exposure of her and her boyfriend sleeping at night.
She stood at the corner of Duboce and South Van Ness holding a sign with a lyric from my favorite Kelly Clarkson song. Which just feels so so mid-2000s for me.
The project of hers that inspired this post was titled i just want to know you.
A family photo book using disposable cameras.
A collaborative familial narrative. A family zine!
I loooooved the idea.
It also struck me as a thoughtful Christmas present if you were kinda broke… but I would later realize my error.
Check out my budget section for details on cost and time for this project.
I reached out to this artist and told her she had inspired me to replicate her project with my own family.
And got a response…
Once I got the blessing from my hipster muse, I went in search of disposable cameras.
If you re-create this idea, I highly recommend using disposable or point-and-shoot cameras with film.
The directive I gave my family was to document their daily routine and the “people, places and things” that were important to them.
Something like 92.5 percent of all photos are taken with a smartphone. It would have been much easier, cheaper and perhaps better for the environment to task my family with shooting images digitally.
They were given only one camera, so each image has to be an intentional one. There’s something like 24-32 images on a film roll, so every frame matters.
A disposable camera adds to the sense of the project’s novelty. We use our phones to take photos every day, so it hardly feels special.
You can’t see the image before you take it so you can’t adjust the framing, the light, the vantage point, etc. You have to compromise your aesthetic standards as you weigh the symbolic value of each image.
When the content of the moment captured is valued more the technical or aesthetic skill of capturing it - the intention shines brighter. Paired with the tactile grain of a film negative? Gorgeous images await.
The limitations of the camera combine to create what I love about the aesthetic of the snapshot: unpolished sincerity.
My mom thinks you should use disposable or point-and-shoot film cameras, too:
Buy disposable cameras (with flash included) for everyone who participates.
Give them a prompt like ‘Photograph your daily routine’ or ‘Take portraits of the people you see all the time in your life.’ Mine prompt in 2006 was to “Document the people, places and things that are meaningful in your current day to day life.”
Remind them each photo should be intentional - and that they will caption it later.
Give them a deadline about 2-3 months away.
Check in and remind them. They will forget!
TIP: My mother says she writes down a list of the photos she’s taken so that she can figure out what else she needs to photograph within the frames she has left. A+ student!
You might have to do some education on how to shoot with negative film. People are used to their phone doing all the work. They might not understand that if you take a photo in a room with low light, you’ll get a grainy under-exposed negative.
Collect and develop the cameras.
Send the digital files to each person individually and ask them to write a few lines (no more than a paragraph) about what’s going on in the frame and why this was an intentional photo they wanted to capture. Ask them not to share their photos with the other participants - it makes the surprise of the book more fun.
Collect the captions.
Make it into a color photo book with a layout of your choice. Blurb, Apple, Snapfish are places you can try - but there are so many ways to make the book. It’s really up to your preference and capacity.
TIP: Add an introduction page that details what this project is and why you did it.
Gift the participants a book for their trouble. Make an extra one for your records and archive in your personal collection.
Repeat the process every 5, 10 or 15 years.
If you’re still on the fence about doing this with your own family, maybe this will seal the deal:
Here’s my mom talking about what the family photo books are all about for her.
What I thought might be an inexpensive but priceless Make Mom Cry Christmas present was actually not that cheap to produce.
Estimated Cost & Time:
Disposable Cameras: $15-20 each
Postage: $15 - $30
In 2006, I bought the cameras and mailed them to the East Coast. And then when they were finished, they sent them all back)
In 2021, I bought the cameras on Amazon and sent them directly to each person, though my family still had to send me their finished cameras at the end.
Film Development: $15 per roll
Lots of ways to do this, but the most important is that you want to end up with the digital files.
Book Printing: $50-125 per book
Apple no longer prints photo books from iPhoto, and I used Blurb in 2021. Here’s a Wirecutter article on the best photo book printer. At the date of publishing this post, they recommend Mixbook.com.
Project Management: 10+ hours
You’ll have to keep reminding people to take photos, to send the cameras, to send their captions, etc.
Book Layout: 2-8+ hours
In 2006, I used Photoshop to arrange my own layouts. This took a lot of time and tweaking. In 2021, I used a default layout with Blurb but adding captions and making it look nice takes time.
Overall Cost:
Depending on how many cameras you buy and how many pages in your book…
Around $200 - $300
Selected Images from the 2006 and 2021 Disposable Camera Family Photo Book
2006
DAD
My Dad’s photos really impressed me, especially his still lives of objects that are meaningful to him.
I love the stop sign photo, his portrait of friend Walt in front of Mike’s Roast Beef and Seafood, and this lush image below of his fly fishing gear. It could be a painting.
Dad documented his morning routine from the moment he woke up (an image of my mother still sleeping the bed) to his evening drive home (above image, with stop sign).
Here are some of his daily routine photos with captions.
Two other favorites, not from his daily routine:
A posed portrait of his best friends.
A fantastic candid photo at the tail end of a family gathering. The framing creates this wonderful story as the eye moves around and discovers new information.
GRAMMA
My maternal grandmother, Alice, passed away 4 years after this project, so her photos are very special to me. When I read her captions, I hear her voice.
I miss her humor: “I’ve taken such a wonderful shot of his back.”
Unfortunately, we have the white belt phase of my life documented.
I love imagining my grandmother telling the nurses at rehab that her grandson wanted her to take pictures of the people in her life - and would they pose for a photo?
These following are my two favorites of hers.
The framing might be because of the parallax effect with the disposable camera - or my grandmother’s poor eyesight. Still, I love how her framing is unexpected and fresh.
MY PHOTOS
I can’t lie. Part of my reason for this project was so that my family could see I was doing alright, and I was living a life in a city where I felt like I belonged and that - ultimately - the move out to California was worth it. I was gonna be OK.
To prove that, I took photos to show off the breadth of my experience in San Francisco so far: The vibrant and quirky parts of the city like Dolores Park, the BART I took to work, my hipster friends and the furniture I bought for my new apartment.
As a Christmas gift, it was a great success!
Then, 15 Years later….
2020/2021
In the Summer of 2020, I thought it might be an interesting time to repeat the project. For various reasons, I didn’t get all the cameras back until late 2021.
This time around, we made it without my grandmother and two pets. And we welcomed the inclusion of my niece and my boyfriend.
I uploaded the photos to Blurb.com, layed out the photos, printed and shipped it before Christmas 2021.
Here are a selection of my favorites, with captions.
You wouldn’t know it, but this is my old friend Cici and me! In order to be safe from COVID, you wouldn’t hug someone unless they were in your household. I had heard of people wearing their masks and wrapping themselves up in blankets and hugging. Cici drove up with her lunch and blanket. We hugged for a very long time. It was wonderful!
Photo by Mom.
This was a Friday ritual to keep track of the passing weeks. Jesse and Adam would make a drink and a baked good, and I would bring pickles and salami. I love the Safeway sign in the background - iconic San Francisco for me. My tote bag is from Sundance 2020, which I went to two months before lockdown and was apparently a Super Spreader event.
Photo by me.
American Gothic: Dave and Dee Dee version. These two are simply the best. Always hard at work on a project or helping a friend, excellent listeners and so full of love! I couldn’t ask for better parents.
Photo by my sister.
Market Basket is my home away from home. This was taken during the pandemic when I would buy groceries for a full week. Lots of meal planning!
Photo by my sister.
This picture is funny. I remember exactly when I took it. I was so nervous that I wouldn’t get it. I love them so much and this is them being funny and goofy. Also this is obviously Grandma and Grandpa!
Photo by my niece.
These two are hard workers and I think they learned a bit. They dug the holes, carried the fence sections and made the many adjustments to the new fence. It was one of the highlights of the year for me, working with my grandsons. I had so much fun, and all for the price of pizza and lemonade.
Photo by Dad.
COVID self portrait. Mask wearing was a reality. I may have been getting ready to go out and I was inspired to document the moment.
Photo by Dad.
Slow walking Ernie. Dee Dee and Ernie walking out of the driveway was a daily ritual.
Photo by Dad.
Here’s Dave putting his one coat of paint on the door. We did a lot of painting during the summer because we were always at home.
Photo by Mom.
The canoe that I was paddling.
Photo by Owen.
American democracy dancing on the razor's edge! We navigated through a sea of corruption and venality - barely. The jubilation of 11/8 ("Liberation Day") was tempered by an attack on the Capitol Building by a mob of white supremacists on 1/6. Sadly, we're now drifting in the doldrums after the storm - and our sociopathic ex-President is still "demanding a recount."
Photo by my brother-in-law.
September 9, 2020. A convergence of wildfire smoke and fog turned the sky orange. This photo is looking up at Sutro Tower on Twin Peaks, normally an iconic SF image. This day is a data point in the timeline of my mental health. It felt like being in Climate Change: the Movie. I woke up at 8am that morning but it felt like dusk. The disorientation was off the charts. Totally bizarre.
Photo by me.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN…
MAKE A DISPOSABLE CAMERA BOOK WITH YOUR CHOSEN FAMILY…
AND PLEASE SHARE WITH ME THE RESULTS!
READER, BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR FUTURE INSTALLMENTS OF…
