Polaroid Pogo and Zink Paper Manipulation

I’ve had this little gadget called the Polaroid Pogo for over two years now and it is one of the cutest little camera toys I own. It is fun because while everyone else has these nice little smart phones with Instagram, I still have the dumbest phone known to Verizon. (Seriously. It butt dials people when I am singing in the car (#OMGsoEmbarrassing!) and it also calls my mom at 2am because I accidentally rolled over on top of the phone.) But even my phone can print little sticker pics from the Pogo printer.

The PoGo is really interesting because of the Zink paper— it has no ink! (Zink= zero ink.) It behaves just like a receipt printer, except that it has cyan, magenta, and yellow ink that respond to heat instead of just black. The PoGo printer heats up the paper at different temperatures and different colors appear. So, so, so cool. And you can do really neat stuff with the paper. I’ve experimented with some household chemicals on the paper as well as heating it up in spots. I’ll post those later. 😉

I actually followed this tutorial to get the image of the Flatiron building in Manhattan. I’ve probably watched this video 20 times and shown it to just as many people. 🙂 (Warning: Super hipsters below.)

Here are some more of my Zink pics– it really makes me miss NYC. Especially the memories from my bike ride from the George Washington Bridge down to the Staten Island Ferry.

(George Washington Bridge, way, way, way, way uptown Manhattan.)

(Along the Hudson, near midtown Manhattan.)

And some tapes from CBS when I worked there.

And GUESS WHAT! I don’t know how I didn’t see this, but my friend showed me that Polaroid has come out with a new digital Polaroid camera using Zink paper! Alas, it is $299. I will stick to my PoGo for now. 😉 But I do love the Zink paper. People complain that the quality isn’t perfect, but that is what was and is so endearing about the actual Polaroid photography. There is magic in the flaws.