Some months back, while lost at Wally World looking for a cheap wireless mouse to supplement a horrendous track pad on a terrible Windows 11 laptop, I did a double take when I saw a two-pack of Fujifilm disposable cameras for sale on the shelf. I figured it had been well over a decade since the last time I saw a single-use 35mm film camera in the wild. I can remember an old head Philly explorer by the name of Radical Ed used to carry around a disposable camera to snap pictures while exploring Byberry and then post the scans to the Opacity.us Forums back in like 2006. I always thought the results were awesome; low quality in the sense that the adventure was more about the explore than the photos. I thought to myself, "why the Hell not?" and picked up a two-pack and still stumble around using the shitty track pad to this day.
I like to wander around a lot, checking out the nooks and crannies of society. However, sometimes what I discover goes un-photographed because it's not necessarily worth my time to unbury my dSLR camera from my backpack for a single scene and taking photos with a cellphone just ain't fun. Other times, I'm merely in the mood to roam and don't have the appetite to put any effort into photographing and just want to enjoy the adventure for what it is. It seemed a disposable camera was the perfect supplement. A quick and shitty way to photograph the corners of interest I find which I am often too lazy to properly capture.
Recently, I sent out the first of the two cameras to be developed. The pictures go back weeks and it was fun to suddenly see what I had forgotten I had captured show up as random photographs within a dump of jpegs that were emailed back to me in a large ZIP file from the lab. This photo of the abandoned Rockaway Beach Branch of the Long Island Rail Road highlights just such a lazy trip. A wonderful place to go for a graffiti-spotting stroll within a city of 8 million and not see another person. Yet, not so important that I needed to break out my traditional digital camera. I'm sure I will be sharing some more crappy shots within the coming months; I have at least 26 more.
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