Polaroid Made Me The Photographer I Am Today

By Ctein

S'truth! My habits and practices came from cutting my photographic teeth on Polaroid film. For the first several years of my "serious" photographic life, Polaroid was all I used (save for a few rolls of 35mm film developed in a summer photography class). I even used it for the first two years I was a photographer on my college newspaper.

Eugene McCarthy running (almost literally!) for the Democratic nomination for president in 1968.

There's a good chance, in fact, that I wouldn't even be a photographer today were it not for Polaroid. Until I got a Polaroid camera, my photographs were extremely ordinary. I've gone back and checked. I was usually the one wielding the family camera, but any other family member could have done exactly as good (namely, bad) a job as I. That all changed early in my teens. My grandpa gave me his Polaroid Highlander 80A rollfilm camera, with Wink-light flash and a modest number of filters.

Having the instant feedback made all the difference in the world (that's why I've always been enthusiastic about digital cameras for beginners). I could immediately see what was wrong with a photo I'd made. Being of an inquisitive and scientific mind I promptly started experimenting. The second illustration here shows a very early photo I made while experimenting with filters to improve skies.

A very early experiment with my new Highlander. Penciled notes on the back say "3000/orange filter/EV 15." Polaroid experimentation not only made me a good photographer, it made me a good record keeper.

In a few years I acquired a full-size Polaroid Model 150 rollfilm camera. Not only did I want those luxuriously large (3 in. by 4 in.) photographs, but Polaroid made a wondrous assortment of films that were not available in Highlander size. I started photographing color, which was now technically as easy as B&W. ASA 3000 B&W film became my mainstay for low light fun and home photomicrography. The 10,000 speed oscilloscope film let me experiment with night and high-contrast photography. Polaroid's infrared film was great.

I'm not sure how I got the money to buy that camera. Polaroid was expensive, and I could only afford to make a handful of photographs each week, even devoting most of my allowance to buying film. I learned how not to waste photographs. I got really good at that, to the point where I expected every photograph to be a keeper. I learned how to take a pass on lesser compositions, to make the one photograph I really wanted to make and walk away. I learned how to meter well with an averaging meter. Polaroid film was no more forgiving than slide film, and your exposures had to be pretty much on the mark. I became skilled at looking at a scene and instantly intuiting how much it deviated from the 12% effective reflectance that the meter expected to see. For my high school graduation, I got a Polaroid Colorpack 250 with all the accessories. Until just a few years ago when I got access to a digital camera, I still used that for some of the product shots for reviews in Photo Techniques magazine. I bought a first-model SX-70 camera and made many, many hundreds of photographs with it into the early 1980s, when the poor stability of the prints soured me on it.

That's what Polaroid did for me. It taught me to develop my eye and discrimination and never make a photograph unless I knew it was the right photograph to make. It taught me to meter accurately; today I still use an averaging meter for all my film work. And it let me start developing my interest in color four or five years earlier than I would have otherwise, without being hampered by inconvenient and lengthy processes.

I'm not going to mourn the loss of Polaroid film; it's no longer important to me in any way. But I do owe it considerable gratitude.

____________________

Ctein

Featured Comment by David: "I'm mourning the Pola loss. It sucks that so many photographers can carry that 'let's move on' attitude so easily for the film processes that proved the medium. To each his own.

"Type 55 is a special thing, nothing like it. I use the medium format stuff to proof lighting. There really is, for me, no better way to do it.

"...Maybe I'll start using digital to check my lights...nowhere near as cool because then I'll have nothing to drop into my box of old Polaroids. That box is like a treasure...I go in there looking for ideas and reminders of ideas all the time. Like Ctein...notes all over those things, lighting diagrams, schemes and ratios. Nice to not have to sit at a computer to do this...stare at a screen for yet another series of tasks.

"I can't think of another invention (computer) that has been so liberating and so insulating/alienating at the same time. Biggest paradox ever."

Comments

[JohnBrewton]

Me too, in a small manner. In the mid '60's, I was the photographer for the high school newspaper. They furnished me with a large and cumbersome Polaroid to use so as to get instant feedback on the image. For my personal camera, at that time, I had an Instamatic which had replaced my original "toy" camera. BTW, the Instamatic was a huge comedown from my plastic toy camera which shot 120 film and was sharp as a tack!

[Jack Bush]

My father was a painter and commercial artist. When I was a boy my Dad would have me pose for him in his studio at home. One of his clients was an underwear manufacturer so I would have to put on various styles and stand still while he drew pictures of me in different poses. I blessed the day he came home with a Polaroid camera. Suddenly great chunks of time wasted, for me at any rate, were reduced to mere minutes.

I (stupidly) put that old camera into a garage sale years ago.

[Mike]

Losing Polaroid film is a bummer. I shoot 4x5 and like to expose sheets of 54 and 55 before moving on to two sheets of TXP320. That gets me a print I can scan, a choice of negatives and my exposures are on the mark.

[Carl Leonardi]

My only comment about any Polaroid film is "It was a blessing and a curse at the same time." May it rest in peace.
It's 2008; digital is here to stay; let's move on. Shooting thousands of Polaroids from 1960 to 2002, I never pulled two that ever looked the same. The one great product they made was the fixer swab, really put a great shine on those army boots and you prayed it didn't rain or they would turn a milky cream color.

[Greg Smith]

I was a photographer in the army, 66-68, and digging through the equipment closet one day I found a Polaroid back for the 4x5 Speed Graphic that was my workhorse and boxes and boxes of 4x5 B&W Polaroid film. I remember that setup fondly; it was a lot of fun. Back then, though, I was not even close to technically literate in photography, having just taught myself how to take pictures, process and print them for the powers that were. I was tickled just to get hard copy out the door. The Polaroid back let me play with images and not worry about process. I felt some small twinges of guilt at burning so much film just enjoying the Polaroid experience, but filed it away under "gummint work".

[Karl]

For about 15 years I shot 809 by the case for my commercial work. Working with the inverted image under the dark cloth, checking critical focus with a loupe and hot light, calculating exposure and contrast range, and then handing the client a beautiful 8x10 proof. What a fabulous process. In many ways those proofs are as good or better than anything I've ever gotten from an Epson.

[Bill Mitchell]

It was a great way to make dirty pictures before I had a darkroom.

[hugh crawford]

A friend of mine took a SX-70 every day for 18 years until the day he died. I helped put together a show
"JAMIE LIVINGSTON. PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997, 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence" that when printed came out to be about 7 x 120 feet. You'd be amazed how hard it is to rephotograph and organize that many Polaroids. There is some information and pictures here
http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/only_the_blog_knows_brook/jamie_livingston/index.html
http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/only_the_blog_knows_brook/2007/10/no-words_dai-21.html
http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/only_the_blog_knows_brook/2007/10/no-words_dai-11.html
and a web site that I am working on where you can see all of them here
http://addresszero.com/pod-html/

[David]

Hugh, WOW, dude,

That is some rich stuff and it begs to be a book.

I couldn't stop looking through those pics, SO much going on there, it's way the hell beyond a being just a document..stunning. Even without the story those images are compelling. absolute diamonds, as singular images, all over that piece.

There is no way that this collection of images could have been shot on anything but sx-70. Something about the sx-70, those little prints are like time cells with real people inside. That or candy.

Thanks for posting that.

[Keith Forbis]

I am definitely happy with digital and I'm looking forward to where it will lead. I never really got into using Polaroid, but I am mourning the loss. I think that just about anything that reduces the diversity in photography is a "bad" thing.

While I do think there is something important to what Ctein said about "not wasting photographs," I think that is more important early on in the learning process. Once you get to a certain point I think it becomes really important to start shooting almost everything that you can. I know that once I got to that point I was more discriminating because of the time it took to set up my camera on the tripod (which I always did because of slow film speed and small apertures) and I just didn't want to waste too much time. But once I went digital and also started using an image stabilizer lens I found myself shooting things (handheld) that I wouldn't have spent the time on before, and that has been a very good thing. I have gotten some really nice images that I wouldn't even have attempted before.

I am mourning the loss of photographic diversity.

[Jamie Ho]

Polaroid as well changed the way I shoot immensely. Gosh, how I will mourn the lost of Polaroids.

I use to shoot conceptual portraits which was a problem, because I was stuck on people.

Shooting with polaroids somehow made me appreciate other things more, more so the importance of light.

What pains me the most is that they decided to cut large format first before I could even try it yet.

[Flaneur]

Hugh,
Jamie's photos are simply amazing, so moving, so tender, so passionate about life. Just saw almost everyone, and I agree it asks for a book. Congratulations for doing the effort of putting together the site.