My first camera: the i-Zone by Polaroid

izone photos Captain Airyca — Baby chickens, our dog, and a counselor at camp, these were a few of my favorite things at 11 years old!

Lets take a trip down memory lane! I want to share with you a treasure from the year 2000 when I was 11 years old – the story of the first camera I ever owned! For Christmas that year, I received a silver polaroid i-Zone camera. It made these tiny postage stamp sized instant photos that also were sticky on the back. It was so cute! The instant film packs for this camera were really expensive though, so the only photos I got to take were with the packs that I got when I received the gift. I savored them, making sure to really take photos of things that I loved. It ended up being 24 photos total – I’ve shared a few of them below.

My grandma watching me open the camera. As you can see, I also got new rainboots for Christmas. 🙂

I am grateful to have these memories preserved, I can confidently say that this first camera was just the beginning of a love of photography for me. My family regularly used an automatic 35mm film camera until the mid-2000’s when digital cameras became better and more accessible. I got my own digital camera with money I earned at my farm job in 2006, which was a huge game changer, and the first camera I could really go wild with. But that is a story for another day!

Also very important in the 2000’s, Harry Potter! This is the little photo album I used to keep my precious photos.

This is what the izone camera looked like!

Here is a little window into the things I felt compelled to photograph when I was 11 years old. I am so happy with the quality and details in these photos so many years later!

Having these little prints has really made me reflect on how important getting your photos into a physical form really is. These couple dozen tiny instant pictures I have looked at dozens of times over the years, whereas the thousands of digital photos on my hard drive? Not so much. I’ve been hard at work getting my digital photos (over 100k of them since 2005….) organized so that I can get things printed. My goal this year is to slowly work at getting a small selection of images from each year printed so that I can hold them in my hands. Not just for me, but for our family to enjoy. After all, that’s why I took most of the photos in the first place, is to preserve our memories, not just to hoard on a hard drive!

What was your first camera? Do you still have it? Do you miss it?