Shake it like a Polaroid Picture
*Correction* you actually aren’t supposed to shake them. I’m not sure where Outkast was getting their information.
Anyway, read this article if you want to know why I still use film cameras.
In college my friends and I loved documenting our young, wild, and free shenanigans (remember that song? it still slaps). My closest friend freshman year would break out her DSLR whenever people started to get a bit tipsy, and the photos that resulted were always immensely entertaining when posted to Facebook the next day. But at one point, we realized that toting around a pricey digital camera from frat house to frat house was not the most practical option, so we all started buying disposable cameras and bringing them with us everywhere we went and would whip them out at a moment’s notice to record our flip cup victory. As a result, some of the most fun, carefree times of my life are memorialized with candid photos and most importantly I have proof that I was once, possibly cool.
I no longer take photos with the same frequency or fervor, but I still try to bring a disposable or my Polaroid with me everywhere I go. I know it would be easier to just use the impressive camera so conveniently built into my Pixel 5, but it just isn’t the same.
There has always been something appealing to me about film photography. I think part of it is a result of the era in which I grew up. I’m what you might call a “young” millennial (aka a 90’s baby). If you aren’t familiar with the implications of this, it means that I’m old enough to remember when people used film cameras, but I also was still quite young when digital became the norm, was maybe 12 when camera phones emerged (although it took a while for them to be any good), and was a stereotypically angsty teen when social media charged onto the scene and changed a lot about the way we approach and regard photography. So in an extremely short span of time, and during what one might call my formative years, there were significant advancements in photo technology that substantially impacted the way we live our lives.
As a result, film cameras tend to stir up nostalgic feelings, thoughts back to childhood photo albums and simpler times before the invention of the “selfie.” I suppose that is why companies who sell instant cameras (a type of camera which uses self-developing film to create a chemically developed print shortly after taking the picture) like Polaroid and Fujifilm have done so well in recent years – I personally own one instant camera from each. They have been able to capitalize on my demographic’s reminiscence of and longing for the good old days.
The other main aspect of film’s appeal to me personally is the authenticity of it. Logically speaking, a digital photo isn’t less “real” than one taken on film. You can still manipulate camera settings, lenses, lighting, angles, filters, and more when you are using film just as you do with digital. But there is something about the finality of film that makes it feel more genuine. You aren’t going to take your Polaroid to the beach and have your friend take 1,000 shots of you from slightly different angles while holding uncomfortable positions so that you can create the illusion of being thicc but not thick and sexy but not risqué, because that would be extremely impractical, time consuming, and exorbitantly expensive. You would use your iPhone for that and then probably do a little facetune-ing and then post it with a caption “the sea speaks to me #nofilter” or “lazy day #relaxation” or “I have a promo code for [insert new fad diet or supplement here] #sponsored.” In my mind, thanks to Instagram (and to a lesser extent its friends Facebook, Snapchat, and Tiktok), digital photos have become synonymous with “fake” and film has become the “real” alternative.
And with that realness also comes an alleviation of pressure to get that perfect shot. If you are posting a photo on the gram, there is this inherent expectation (maybe it’s just me who feels this) that the photo is the best possible photo and you or your subject look as good you possibly can, because all anyone portrays on social media is a highly curated, edited, stylized, airbrushed representation of their life. I think people should be able to portray on social media whatever version of themselves they wish, but the proliferation of these idealized images and as a result the propagation of the idea that a perfect person and a perfect life indeed exist, fills me with anxiety. When I choose to document my life with instant and disposable cameras, that anxiety lifts, as it isn’t expected to be “perfect.”
Somewhat ironically, I recently decided to start sharing some of my film photos on this site and on Instagram. I figured, what’s the point of taking a photo to memorialize a moment, feeling, event, day if then it just gets hidden away in my little photo album for me to probably never look at again until I move or reorganize and I stumble on it, pick it up and remember that I haven’t looked back through the old shots in a while and then spend hours going through the pages instead of packing or whatever I was supposed to be doing. I hope that posting the photos will not only help me to create an accessible, authentic, online diary of my everyday life, but maybe it will show people that not everyone on social media is or is trying to be flawless, and that’s okay.
