There’s a reason when you search for double exposure photography online, you’ll get a cascade of people’s heads with stuff in them.

Because it works.

Making one exposure is hard enough, that making two that interact together can be incredibly difficult. So when one uses the silhouette of their partner and/or friends, and inserts flowers, trees, or something, anything else, the results are at the very least, eye-catching.

When I came up with the idea for this piece, I wondered if it was too cynical. Like, the idea that you can manufacture interesting-ness by simply blasting sun at someone’s back to steal their silhouette and then imprison another thing within its bounds.

But let’s face it. It works.

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The Polaroid I-2 is a camera heralded for its manual controls, which is attractive to any photographer as deep in this game as I am.

But the truth is…I never use Manual Mode.

I only shoot my Polaroid I-2 in auto-mode.

(and multiple-exposure mode, but that’s also basically auto-mode, just twice)

In many of my Polaroids, there’s a level of intention (i’m good at faking it), so people are often surprised to hear that I don’t think about exposure very often. Especially when it comes to double-exposure photography.

Exposure isn’t on my top list of concerns for a Polaroid. Yes, I’ve probably developed an unconscious sense for what exposures work and don’t work, but really…I trust the camera to find the exposure for me. For the most part, it nails it as good, if not better than I could.

Polaroids have very little latitude when it comes to light, which is why an SX-70 or Polaroid SLR 680 only has the black and white “Oreo” exposure compensation dial. Really, all you need to think about is making the highlights brighter or the shadows darker, which on Polaroid, is only, like, a couple clicks of difference. I’m sure there’s some studio Polaroid photographers out there that really enjoy deeper manual controls on a Polaroid I-2, but I think they are largely unnecessary.

For the most part, the camera’s got it. And when it doesn’t, it’s probably a situation that no amount of manual control could fix.

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You wake up with coffee on your mind. You make your way over to your matte black Cosori gooseneck water boiler where you can choose your perfect temperature for your pour-over. You turn on your Baratza Encore burr grinder and measure out the exact amount of beans for your morning cup. You’ve got it down to a science.

While your water boils, You painfully chug a pint glass of ice water, ice knocking against your sensitive teeth, and you chase it with a handful of exactly 8 almonds. You saw a post on Instagram saying that this was the best way to jumpstart your metabolism in the morning. You’ve been doing it daily for 2 months and you feel it keeps your energy from crashing midway through the day. Your kettle beeps indicating your water is now at 205 degrees.

For optimal health, you know that you need 5-10 minutes of sunlight entering your eyes within 1 hour of waking up. It’s cloudy outside. You’ll need 10-30 minutes. You walk outside to your back patio, freshly poured-over coffee in hand. You put your AirPods in to make best use of your time. You’re listening to an audiobook titled Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. You’re visiting your parents this weekend, and you have a lot to unpack before then.

On your way out the door to your job, you reach into the fridge for a glass Pyrex container marked “Wednesday”. You measured the size of the container and filled it with the optimal amount of greens, lentils, sliced grilled chicken, hummus, and feta. At your 12:15 lunch break, you’ll mix it together and you’ll get all your macros and nutrients to last you until dinner. Dinner is prepped and waiting eagerly for your arrival home tonight—next to your six pack of non-alcoholic Michelob Ultras. You used to drink, but your Oura ring tracked your sleep and opened your eyes to how poor your sleep had gotten after a night of two or more regular beers. You opted for deeper sleep, which you get when you’re not laying in bed anxiously planning out the day ahead.

After a long day pouring over spreadsheets adjusting your formulas, you quickly eat your pre-planned dinner and drink your light, non-alcoholic beer, and grab the Nomatic McKinnon Camera Pack 25L by the door. There’s a tripod next to it. You grab that as well.

The weather is perfect, finally a clear night. You’re going to take a photo of the harvest moon. You drive out to the local high school football field. You set up your carbon fiber Manfrotto tripod, and begin unpacking your bag. You unsheathe a Nikon Z6 Mark II. You almost opted for the Nikon Z8, but you were afraid the high-resolution sensor would show slightly more noise in the photo compared to the Z6, so you went for the more reasonable option. The money you saved, you spent on the Nikkor Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR lens. You set your camera to ISO 200 to limit the amount of digital noise. You realize you’ll also need a fast shutter speed to combat the moon’s movement, so you may have to raise the light sensitivity of your sensor, but preferably not. You set your aperture to f/11.

At the perfect moment, you fire off some shots after getting your settings just right. You pack up and quickly drive home to view your images on your LG Ultrafine monitor. The light orange tint, craters, they’re all there. You did it. It’s perfect. You look at your watch—it’s 10:15. Time to go to bed.

You lay in bed, giddy from the satisfaction of your well-managed day. The adrenaline keeps you awake. You reach over to scroll Instagram for a bit. You see a post from an account called @chaosformvibes. It’s a faulty-looking Polaroid, with a scoop of brown eating up a corner of the frame. There’s a stripe of teal covering a third of what looks to be a poorly-lit, blurry photo of some flowers. You’re confused. You click the username wondering if this person is aware that they posted a bad photo. You scroll their feed. Seems to be a pattern. Photo after photo, either double-exposed, blurry, out of focus. You realize that the film stock may be the problem. Does @chaosformvibes realize they could buy 35mm or 120 film to get better sharpness and precision? Do they even understand the rules of photography?

You back out of their profile, confused by the hundreds of photos on the defunct instant film brand. You go back to your profile to see who’s engaging with your moon photo. 2 likes. You go back to @chaosformvibes profile to get comfort that someone out there is getting less engagement than you. You’re stunned to see 70 likes on a photo of what looks to be the same scene accidentally shot twice and layered on each other.

You spent hours selecting the right equipment, watching reviews, shopping, learning your settings, and after waiting for the optimal weather conditions finally achieving a perfectly sharp photo of the moon. But now, you’re in a deep rabbit hole of all these photographers shooting photos with $30 box cameras that became obsolete decades ago—comment sections full of fervor and excitement.

Your moon photo sits lonely. A stark, orange ball dense with your balanced metabolism, smooth hand-poured coffee, a therapized mind, and a perfectly curated gear bag.

You tell yourself you operate out of logic and math. Common sense. But if you look too deeply into the craters and contours of your moon photo, you begin to see the abstract shapes and patterns that make it up. They are random geographic bumps and mountains, canyons and valleys. Your photo of the moon makes as much sense as a bad, blurry Polaroid. For all you know, @chaosformvibes spent his entire day formulating each detail of his exposure, purposely utilizing the bad chemistry of an obsolete photography medium, right after his favorite coffee brewing ritual while listening to an audiobook unpacking family trauma of his own.

Maybe @chaosformvibes understands something that you don’t.

That all of this, the micro-adjustments aren’t as pregnant with the heavy impact we imbue on them. That at the end of the day, someone scrolls past both of our photos, uncaring about the time and effort went into them. That maybe, the work, the precision, and the intense focus isn’t for anyone…but you, and you alone.

You lay there, eyes wide, bloodshot, staring a stark truth in the face: Maybe if you had just sprung for the Nikon Z8, you would have gotten more likes.

This to ChaosFormVibes, a Polaroid newsletter. Keep it locked for tips, tricks, and thoughts all about instant film!