Taking Polaroids on my Birthday

Last Saturday was my birthday.

Before COVID-19 struck, the original plan for my birthday was to be away in France with my husband and some friends for a music festival that my husband was DJing at. I was especially pleased that my birthday had fallen on a Saturday this year which made it perfect to celebrate over a weekend of great music and friends.

Alas, it wasn’t meant to be and I was to remain in England. We are still adhering to social distancing measures in the UK so I just spent my birthday in the end with my husband.

I was grateful on my birthday that it was lovely and sunny in Brighton which meant we could go out for the day.

We initially spent a lovely sunny morning in the garden with our animals. I took this photo of my husband holding our cat Saffy on my Polaroid SX-70 Alpha 1 camera with some expired Polaroid 600 film which I needed to use up. Using expired film is always a risk but thankfully they came out in the main part of the photo, aside from the black streak along the side. Also, if you look close enough, you can see my other cat, Lil Saf sitting on the wall in the background:

We decided for the afternoon we would drive to the countryside and visit some secluded woods for a picnic.

We have a lovely italian restaurant opposite where we live which has currently adapted itself in these times to a lovely italian takeaway delicatessen and we were able to purchase some lovely fresh bread, stuffed peppers and aubergines and also some Burrata and cold meats for our picnic.

We took our dog Daisy who absolutely loved wandering around in the woodland area. We came across a lake where I took this photo:

My husband took this photo of me whilst we were eating our picnic which came out blurry but I quite like the dreamy feel of it:

Here is a random, blurry shot I took which was of Daisy but she moved too fast out of where I had originally focused her as she was running around so much sniffing the woodland area so it’s a very abstract photo. I almost think it looks like I’ve put some kind of Kaleidoscope filter on the lens:

After our lovely afternoon picnic we headed to Brighton Marina and spent the remainder of the day on our boat.

Whilst my birthday wasn’t what I had originally planned, I still had a lovely day and it was nice to connect with nature and relax away from the hustle and bustle of city life.

Plus I have some Polaroid photos to keep as a reminder of my birthday.