Accidentally Wes Anderson/PaperShoot Camera/Asteroid City

Ever since getting Covid-19 in 2020, dealing with long Covid and everything crashing down and having to close my photography studio in early 2022, along with still processing and working towards finishing up that closure, I've been pretty burned out when it comes to finding inspiration for taking new photos. So even I was surprised at my excitement after I entered an Instragram contest by an account I'm a longtime fan of, Accidentally Wes Anderson, on a whim and was a winner of an Asteroid City prize pack featuring a PaperShoot Camera with an Asteroid City themed cover.

The concept of the PaperShoot Camera especially piqued my interest. Their website says "The Paper Shoot is an eco-friendly digital camera that aspires to promote forward-thinking and creativity. If you love disposable cameras for their simplicity, aesthetic, and the lack of screen or controls which allows you to live fully in the moment, but don't love the developing or added costs, you'll love the Paper Shoot." I was a teenager in the 90s and carried 35mm disposable cameras with me everywhere.  I worked in a one hour photo lab in high school and loved capturing my life and developing the photos. By the time I was 25 I was starting to photograph people and events professionally on film, and I couldn't afford to switch my gear to digital till about 2008. I still enjoy photographing with film for fun but tend to struggle to get around to developing it.  So this little, surprisingly high quality digital camera that replicates the look of 35mm film was really exciting for me. 

I took it to Circle Cinema completely untested, and took some photos around the theater both before and after we watched Asteroid City (such a wonderful movie by the way, I am always completely in love with the attention to detail and visual design of Wes Anderson's films) and loved the shutter noise and the fact that I couldn't see what I was capturing. The set came with a little sd card to activate the filter function and shooting the different color options one frame after another was fun. Getting home and plugging in the camera to see how my photos turned out was exciting and I was pleasantly surprised at the sharpness of the photos. 

I chose to feature Circle Cinema first because they are one of my favorite spots in Tulsa, sitting on an older alignment of Route 66 and one of the historic buildings that I've watched become lovingly restored over the years along with many more in the Kendall Whittier Main Street District. Places like this have inspired me to do what I can to work in preservation of more historic places, both on Route 66 and here in our state. Here are some of my photos from that first run with the PaperShoot camera. I've already taken it out a couple more times, and since it's so portable and inspires creativity I'll probably keep taking it with me, so follow along to see what other places I decide to visit with it.