I’ve been shooting portraits for my sister for about 7 months or so, she does the makeup, I take the pictures. She showed me these polaroids Andy Warhol had taken of celebrities and she wanted to get a very relaxed, fun vibe like those.
Now I thought these pictures were great and so I started working on developing a set of looks for pictures that would evoke the feel of a proper polaroid.
I use a lot of instax mini film and as a modern instant photo medium its excellent, but actual polaroid branded cameras and film have a very distinct characteristic look to them that you don’t really get with instax.
So to begin, I knew I needed to have a frontal bare flash, illuminating subjects directly from where the camera is. I also wanted to shoot in a square format because it seemed the easiest to manage.
So I looked at many polaroids and my basic understanding was that they had a bit of warmth to them, not a lot of contrast in the darks, almost like a fade and relatively washed out colours, sometimes with a little bit of a bluish cast or yellow cast depending on the type.
VSCO makes some very good polaroid presets but these were too similar to the originals for my taste.
This is what I came up with first, a very overexposed, warm tone.
This look was nice but I wanted to create something with a similar feel but a little more colour and maybe some more contrast. I opted to build off of a preset for a random generic warm film with a little bit of grain.
To that extent I created a couple presets that allowed me to achieve several distinct looks that all had a retro feel to them. One neutral, one warm and one a littler cooler.
Now to get to actually taking the pictures, just as important as having the look, I had to make sure the pictures worked. I think to really capture the polaroid aesthetic you have to have the models relax and have fun, get props if needed and preferably have a solid background.
I think at the end of it, I realised what I was looking to make and had made was more a mix of traditional polaroid and film point and shoots and I'm really happy with the results. I'm going to be using this method for pictures of friends a LOT. I also realised each picture always came out different so the presets I had made were really just a starting point and each one had to be tweaked to match the colour and the subject in every image, but they work a treat. We've started incorporating these to the end of our shoots so we have some more fun, informal images.
TL:DR to make polaroid type images on digital cameras, shoot in a square format (1:1) ratio, use an onboard flash to shoot directly at the subject, use a solid background. In editing, wash out skin tones a little and brighten highlights. cool or warm temperature to taste.
You can see most of the pictures I've made using these looks below.
