Two women from New York, driving a big, white rental truck appeared at The Jacksonville Center Friday afternoon and said they were looking for a good place to shoot some pictures with a special camera.
Not just any camera, mind you, but a 250-pound Polaroid Land Camera that shoots 20 by 24 poster size photos -- the last of its breed and destined soon to be a museum piece.
Jennifer Trausch (left), works for Polaroid as the technician assigned to the giant camera the company leases out for $1,500 a day to professional photographers who want to shoot one of a kind photos (mostly portraits). The legendary Mary Ellen Mark has used the camera for some of her haunting portraits. So has Sports Illustrated legend Walter Ioos Jr. An even larger version that shoots life size portraits was used to shoot images of first responders after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
The larger version is retired. Polaroid no longer makes the giant rolls of film it requires and, soon, the company will stop making the 20-inch-wide rolls that feed the smaller version and it, along with four others, will fade into history along with the company's role in the photographic industry.
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