12 Months on Film - January 2025

Analog

Feb 21

Joining in on the 12 Months on Film challenge seemed like a no-brainer project choice for 2025. I had also set a goal to better understand how temperature affects Polaroid developing, so selecting my Polaroid i-2 for the cold month of January was an obvious choice.

I selected a pack of i-Type film to shoot while on our New Year’s ski trip to the Methow Valley. Snow was abundant this year and there were plenty of scenes to turn my camera to. Polaroid says that film performs best between the temperatures of 55 – 82°F and this winter was maxing out somewhere near freezing, if we were lucky. Polaroid also says photographs taken below 55°F will often turn out over-exposed, lacking color contrast and with a green tint. They recommend doing all you can to keep the film and the camera warm before, during, and after shooting to ensure proper developing. I learned that it’s difficult to quickly pull out the film and tuck it into the warmth of a pocket while wearing thick gloves, so you’ll see my fingerprint on the edge of many of the images.

You’ll also see some marks along the bottom edge of some of the photos called Opacification failure. These occur when the chemical opacification layer (which protects the film from light after ejection from the camera) did not have enough time to mix and spread before the photo was exposed to the ambient light in the environment- likely by me quickly removing the photo to tuck it into a warm pocket.

While I enjoyed learning more about what causes these imperfections in a Polaroid image, I think they only add to the uniqueness of each photograph and I’m hard pressed to try to avoid them in the future. To me, a Polaroid should have weird marks, chemical failures, and unexpected colors- that’s the fun of creating these little pieces of art.

Last week on a trip to my parents house, I spent days scanning in old photos. I came across a few Polaroids from my childhood that looked like the could’ve been taken much more recently. I have the camera that these images were likely created with, maybe using that will have do be another installment of 12 Months on Film.