The allure of throwing cameras
It’s definitely old news by now, but I’m still amazed by the weirdest photographic method that I’ve seen on Flickr: cameratoss. For those unfamiliar with the process, you set your camera’s shutter to a long exposure time, push the shutter release, and throw it in the air. Physics does the rest of the work, and you can come up with some surprisingly cool results. Most of the time, though, your toss yields a rather unsatisfactory, blurry blob.
The regular cameratossers are serious enough to where there’s a cameratoss Flickr group and even a cameratoss blog showcasing the better tosses as well as how to make your own. Will this be the next Lomography? Before anyone else comes up with the idea, I need to get my hands on a Holga and create holgatoss. Until then, however, I tried a rather expensive (in terms of attempts) alternative, since I’m too paranoid to throw my Leica-lensed Lumix in the air: polatoss. I launched my Polaroid OneStep Express into the air, and, needless to say, the results were far from spectactular.
Polatoss might work with a Polaroid NightCam, since you can use a cable release to take up to 8-second exposures (obviously, the Polatoss is then Polatethered, but I doubt it matters too much.)
(I also tried treotoss, which failed quite miserably as well, but hey, at least the name is cute.)
Article Abstract
Posted 24 October 2005. Approx. 229 words.
The coolest Flickr trend is a little something called cameratoss, where one throws the camera in the air on a long exposure time. For now, I’ll let the others do it with their high-megapixel digital’s lens, but I’ll try it with other cameras.
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Hey, great post, found you via technocrati. I run both the flickr group and blog, you have as far as I know the first polaroid tosses there, and “some” of the first film tosses too (there have been a handful). I’ve actually been wanting to do a holgatoss, just because it is a relatively accessible medium format, but it would definitely require a mod to hold the shutter button down (which holga’s require during exposure). Perhaps the folks at the kite aerial photography group would have a nice solution.
Thanks for the mention. There are lots of facets to camera toss, you’ll find the entire spectrum from fine art to just plain silly fun.