I’ve found a ray of hope. It may not look like much, but that ray of hope is embedded in this photo.

It was taken with my old Polaroid SX-70 and new film made possible by the IMPOSSIBLE project. When polaroid announced a few years back that they were suspending production of their instant film I thought I’d never be able to use this (or any of my other polaroid cameras) again. So when the film arrived on my doorstep a few weeks back I was ecstatic.

I waited for a beautiful sunny day and then loaded my camera with the new film and went outside to shoot flowers in my garden… but try after try resulted in disappointment. Some got caught in my camera’s old cranky mechanisms, some turned out overexposed, and others were woefully underexposed. If I looked hard enough I could see some semblance of an image, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack. I put the camera away.

I didn’t hold much hope when I pulled the camera out again today, but thought I’d give it one more try. It wasn’t a beautiful sunny day. The light wasn’t flowing. Clouds had been hovering overhead all day long. Truth be told I gave it a few more tries and out of the ashes came a photo with a bunch of beautiful white daisies. They appeared out of nowhere… like magic. The magic that only this camera and this film can create.

It’s not perfect by any means, but hope has nothing to do with perfect. Hope is better. Hope just has to have another day. Hope is a bunch of little white daisies that appear like magic on a piece of film.