Get your vintage on with a Polaroid filter.
With the ever-advancing quality of cameras on our phones, it’s almost too easy to get a good picture. As a stylistic backlash to this modern clean look, it’s become more and more fashionable to aim for vintage-style, low-quality photos that evoke the look of the 1960s and ‘70s.
And those kind of blurry, grainy, or dark photos aren’t necessarily a bad thing — instead it seems like the people in the images were having so much fun that they didn’t have time to find the proper exposure, locate the right lighting, or take a second shot. There’s a certain beauty in what might otherwise be considered “bad photos,” especially on Instagram. In fact, there’s been a worldwide resurgence of Polaroid photography, as well as the use of grain filters that mock the look of film and 80s-style digital camera apps like Huji.
Of course, taking a photo that looks effortlessly cool is trickier than you might think. iPhone cameras are built with auto-focus that makes it almost impossible to get a blurry image — and even if you manipulate the focus, it’s still tough to nail that perfect just-under-the-surface blur of an old-fashioned Polaroid.
Luckily, it’s easier to give a modern photo an old look than it is to turn an old photo modern.