by Laura Oles
When Sarah and Eric were planning their upcoming honeymoon,
they decided to mix business and pleasure. While other newlyweds might jet away to tropical locales to
spend time on the beach, Sarah and Eric decided to opt for a road trip, taking
Polaroid photos all along Route 66 – a trip that is being funded by a small
group of supporters who have been promised photos in return for their micro
investment. Sara and Eric love the nostalgia of documenting their road trip
with this vintage but still very viable medium.
How did they come to the idea to combine their honeymoon
trip with a photography-related business proposition? It all comes down to Kickstarter.
Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com)
helps fund creative projects by connecting artists and inventors with
investors. Since the site went
live in 2009, over four million people have pledged more than $609 million
dollars toward 41,000 creative projects. Each creator remains in charge of all
aspects of her project and anyone can launch a project as long as it meets
Kickstarter’s basic guidelines.
Funding requests can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of
thousands. A select few have even
been successfully funded at a million dollars or more.
In the case of Sarah and Eric, their first Kickstarter
project is a modest one as they only asked for pledges totaling $1,000, but
pledges totaled five times that amount.
Eric is a photography buff with an arsenal of vintage 120 cameras,
including a 1914 Kodak and a German-made 1939 Twin Lens Reflex. Sarah shoots with her Canon T21 DSLR
and also likes experimenting with her Diana mini. Both Sara and Eric enjoy the nostalgia of traditional shooting
and the feel of experiencing a printed Polaroid print within minutes of
capturing an image.
Sarah and Eric have followed and backed several other
Kickstarter projects over the last year and learned a great deal from the
process. When asked what made them choose the idea of traveling on Route 66
with a Polaroid camera in hand, Sarah said, “I think it's a bit of nostalgia and a bit of a
tangible result. I can be impatient and I love that I can have my photo in
front of me in just a few minutes.” Their backers seem to share their
enthusiasm and are looking forward to receiving Polaroid prints in the mail of
their travels along Route 66.
For the trip, they will be using a few different Polaroid ColorPack Land
Cameras, such as the 100 and the 250.
Even though Sarah and Eric are young in years, they are old
school when it comes to photography.
Sarah enjoys shooting digital, but her love for film and the older
format cameras remains strong. It
is their love for these vintage shooting experiences that really spurred them
into creating this Route 66 Kickstarter project. Sara says, “We hope that our Kickstarter project inspires
others to take up film photography! We want to show people how accessible film cameras
still are in today’s environment.”
To learn more about Sara and Eric’s Kickstarter project,
visit: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/goodstorysarah/route-66-polaroid-project
To learn how to create your own Kickstarter project, visit www.kickstarter.com
