Polaroid Diaries: Anafi

Shortly before reaching the first anniversary of the Letters to Barbara, I decided to enrich the blog’s content a bit. I’m always enthusiastic when it comes to new cameras. After writing a very long article about instant photography (you can read it here), I decided to buy a Polaroid camera. It arrived just on time, shortly before going to Anafi on vacation, and I decided to take it with me. I wanted to try it in the harsh light of Anafi and to experiment a bit. It was actually in Anafi, where the Polaroid Diaries were born. Today, I’m glad to present to you the first volume, called Polaroid Diaries: Anafi.

From now on, I will try to have a Polaroid camera with me on every journey. For the record, I bought the Polaroid Onestep+ camera, one of the latest models of Polaroid Originals. It’s not a refurbished camera but a brand new model. It comes with a significant advantage: if you download the Polaroid Originals App, you have a couple of extras, like light painting and double exposure. The most important of them all, though (at least for me), is the possibility to use the camera manually. For an instant camera, this opens a whole new world of experimentation.

I’d love to shoot several rolls of the I-Type film, which is compatible with the Onestep+, before writing my honest opinion about it. After I start feeling confident with the camera, I will definitely review it (Update: here’s the OneStep+ review), so if you are interested, make sure to check the blog in the coming weeks. For the time being, all I want to do is take photos while traveling and present them to you.

What you’ll see in the Polaroid Diaries: Anafi

The Polaroid Diaries section of the blog is brand new. That said, you can even call it an under-construction section. I plan to experiment with the camera a lot and present more photos and less text. One should never forget, of course, that instant cameras don’t have the capabilities of DSLR cameras. On the contrary, the images won’t be that sharp, and the colors might look odd or less vibrant. So, why travel with a Polaroid?

A part of the question is answered in the Instant Photography article -and another one, more personal, can be found in the Xennial Traveler mindset. In brief, I would say that nothing compares to the originality of a Polaroid: you can never have two identical photos when it comes to Polaroids. It feels like you’re capturing what your eyes see in one single moment. Plus, the settings are tricky, and sometimes you can end up having a pretty lousy photo that still looks attractive, making it somehow even more special. But the best thing is that you can have a printed photo in your hands at once. It doesn’t happen that often in our digital world, does it?

The Polaroid Diaries: Anafi actually includes the very first photos I’ve taken with the Polaroid Onestep+. As time goes by, I’m starting to learn the camera, study its behavior, and recognize when the light is optimal for a polaroid. There is enough room for experimentation, and the results are satisfying. What felt liberating to me is that in the Polaroid Diaries: Anafi, I thought I could take photos of whatever attracted me at a given moment: sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

Polaroid Diaries: Anafi

So, let’s start with the polaroids from Anafi. The light on that remote island was very harsh, even though I arrived there by mid-September. I tried to experiment a bit, and I shot a couple of films. For your information, the I-Type film is expensive: it costs 15 euros per pack and comes with 8 photos. Yeap, that’s 15 euros for eight shots. So, be thoughtful while shooting polaroids; otherwise, you might end up broke very quickly.

The very first photo is the view from my room in Anafi. I took the picture at noon. I opened the door, and I underexposed the photo: I wanted to have a dark frame and focus on the view.

Later on the same evening, I decided to take a photo of the sunset. The sun is setting in the Caldera of Santorini (you will soon see a polaroid roll from Santorini, too), and I wanted to know if I could get some interesting colors. Remember that in Polaroid photography, you will have either highlights or shadows 99% of the time, not both. So here, it was less about the landscape and more about the sun.

The Polaroid Diaries: Anafi could never be complete without a visit to the Monastery of Kalamiotissa. Anafi hosts the second biggest monolith of Europe (the first one is Gibraltar), and on the top lies the Monastery of Kalamiotissa. It’s standing there for more than four centuries, and you need approximately an hour and a half of hiking to reach it. Not an easy task but doable. Barbara and I have rented a car for a few days and here’s a photo from our way there. The fastest shutter speed of the Onestep+ is 1/125; therefore, shooting while moving can create interesting images (or unusable ones).

Reaching the top of Kalamos (the name of the Monolith) is always rewarding. It was a hot day, so we ended up there exhausted. But the view is spectacular. Barbara had to wear a scarf around her head so she could protect herself from the intense sun. I thought of taking a portrait of her.

Of course, the little Monastery of Kalamiotissa standing on the top deserved a photo. The light was too harsh, and it proved hard to take a decent picture.

We returned to the room later in the afternoon, shortly before sunset. The light was significantly sweeter, and I decided to take a couple of photos. The first one is pretty experimental and unstaged: Barbara decided to read her book (it’s this one). I tried to see if a shadowplay would have been possible.

Then, I placed my mini-tripod and tried to capture a self-portrait by using the remote shutter of the Polaroid Originals app.

For the end of the Polaroid Diaries: Anafi, I kept two landscape photos. The first one is taken from the ferry shortly before arriving at the port of Anafi. The Chora of Anafi is a tiny whitewashed detail on the top of the rock. For sure, landscape photography with a polaroid camera is challenging.

The second one is the view from our veranda in Anafi. We stayed, once again, at the Dream Anafi studios, one of the most beautiful places in Anafi.

Polaroid Diaries: Anafi – The End

So, that was my Polaroid Diaries: Anafi volume. I will present more Polaroids within the coming weeks, so make sure to check back the blog and subscribe to my Polaroid updates. Meanwhile, let me know if you are using a polaroid camera and share your tips in the comments below.

*Update: Two years after writing this post, I returned to Anafi and shot the most extended polaroid diary to this day. I used the Polaroid SX-70. You can see the photos here.

Check the current Polaroid OneStep+ prices on the official Polaroid websites:

The US store, The EU store, The UK store

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More Polaroid Diaries: The full Polaroid diaries

Polaroid camera reviews: My OneStep+ review, My Polaroid Go Review

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Last Updated on October 9, 2021 by George Pavlopoulos