Wenders took more than 12,000 Polaroids between 1973 and 1983, but only 3,500 still remain. He stated that he, gave them away as he said that if he had the person he just took a photo of in front of him, he would give them the photo because it felt right that they got the photo. He started off using a polaroid camera but then used a large format camera to capture images although he preferred the polaroid in order to capture images as and when they happened, rather than need to set the camera up first before capturing a moment.