As an avid film shooter I must admit: Polaroid film has the easiest turn-around time for getting from photo to screen than anything else in the medium. I shoot plenty of 35mm and 120 film, but then I either have to process it myself or send it to a lab, then scan all of it, edit all of it and pick my favorite frames to share. But with Polaroid all I have to do is point, shoot, and print, then decide if the photo is worth adding to my portfolio, and if it is, I just scan it, do a bit of exposure tweaking and dust clean up in photoshop, and it’s ready to share. So easy and laid back and relaxing!
This winter I’ve fallen into the habit of shooting a cartridge of Polaroid every couple of weeks. It’s an expensive habit, but overall not as expensive as shooting rolls and rolls of 35mm or 120 film and all the money and time that goes into developing and scanning them. I use a Polaroid Sun 600 camera I thrifted a couple years back. It’s not as nice or as easy to control as my Polaroid SX-70 camera is, but the 600 film that’s available for it is right there on the shelf at my local big box store, so I can pick up fresh film for it whenever I want rather than waiting for Amazon to deliver the rarer SX-70 film.
Here are some of the winter images I’ve captured with Polaroid 600 film recently.
This past Spring during lockdown I also went through a Polaroid phase. here’s a video I made for Fotodiox about my creative process during that time.