FUJIFILM AND FIVE WEEKS IN THE WILD WEST

Digital photography allows us to be perfect, whether it’s the landscapes we see or the smiles we flash for the camera. There's always more space on a memory card, or the possibility to fix something on the computer. This summer I spent a few weeks capturing moments from the road on instant film, and it put me in an entirely different artistic mode. 

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I snapped photos of real, raw, poorly-lit, boring and sometimes beautiful flashes in time that all have a part in telling the story of this trip, which took my friend and I through ten states. Before the quest to stage photos for social media, we stuck photos in leather-bound albums, and we'd later look back fondly at some of the less-than-ideal moments, like traffic jams and muddy paws. They were snapshots that were just as important to the journey as the main events — little pieces of the puzzle that fit in perfectly alongside the mountains, lakes and cotton candy skies. I’ve certainly had a fair amount of fun flipping through these photos with my own hands, as evident from the occasional fingerprint on the scans.

Here are my favorite Fujifilm Instax shots from five weeks in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Nevada.