For the last couple of years film has been trending especially in the wedding space! It’s pretty amazing that in such a digital and instant world something as method based and slow as film could pop back up, but it has. I pride myself in having incorporated film into my life and client workflow just before it started trending, but that is beside the point. I wanted to address film photography and what that practically looks like during engagement and wedding portraits. What some of the differences are between film and digital images. And cover how my business has incorporated film in multiple aspects of our client work.

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Inside the episode

1. Our Background with Film

• I can’t think of a better way to start this episode than explaining my background in film photography! So let’s take a journey. I grew up right as the digital age took over. Most of my childhood was captured on small point and shoot digital cameras, but I do remember my parents giving me the little disposable film cameras on family vacations occasionally. 

• So fast forward to my college days, I studied fine art photography at my university. So my first real experience with film were film photography classes in college. I had no particular interest in film while I was studying. I was excited about portraiture and composition and editing. So through those classes I remember sticking very closely to my classmates in the darkroom and I didn’t take in all that I could have. Which probably led to my current state of sending my film rolls out to a company to be developed now instead of doing that myself. In my defense I don’t have room for a designated dark room in my house now anyways.

• So what changed my mind about film? My amazing husband can take all the credit there. I was slowly training him to join my work as a second photographer, and to his credit he picked up the camera settings and technical aspect so much faster than I did at first. But at the start of 2021 he mentioned that learning how to use a film camera interested him so he could really dial in and understand the basics. I wasn’t too into the idea at first but he won me over with the idea and let’s be honest I can always think of a reason to buy another camera. So we picked up two 35mm film cameras on one of our trips and started learning right away! 

• Needless to say we fell in love with the process and the fact that the finished film photos were just that, finished. We didn’t need to edit our film scans after we go them back. It had a sense of nostalgia to the tones that we never saw in our digital pictures.

• So slowly I started to add in a bit of film to my client sessions, and eventually upgraded my film camera to a medium format film camera body.

• After years of practicing and learning how to edit images to match film I can more confidently than before say that we have incorporated film and the film aesthetic into our workflow for our client work. I practice so much with both film and editing each year that I am sure next year I will be even more confident than I am now!

2. Is film better than digital?

• Short answer- in some ways yes and in some ways no.  In most ways, they are just different.
• I was trying to think of how to explain this and I came to this. Film is a completely intentional process. Film is slow, film is involved, film for portrait work means posing and stillness, and film takes a lot of time.
• I will not be taking a film picture of you and your partner running hand in hand through a field. If I did you would most likely have a completely out of focus picture of you and your partner running through a field.. and not the cute intentionally blurry photos either, like it would be obvious I missed it.
• When I photograph clients with film I tell them that I will focus the image and then count them down to when I press the shutter. This is so they know to be still for that moment. Part of the art and process of film is the slowness and intentionality behind it.
• In general film requires more light to properly expose an image, which here in sunny Colorado tends to work best in the mornings, afternoons and early evenings. Even golden hour before sunset sometimes does not have enough light to properly expose a film image.
• The main difference between film and digital is the speed and reliability of digital cameras. I would never try to take family formal pictures with my film camera. Sometimes I take the equivalent of an entire roll of film frames on one extended family grouping to get one without blinks. 
• Basically, digital cameras are a reliable powerhouse of a tool, I will always be taking digital back up images of the film photos I capture because there are so many once in a lifetime moments on a wedding day and currently film is still a greater risk than digital to me. And let’s face it time is precious and fleeting on a wedding day. Each year I get faster in using my film camera but I can’t say that it would ever compete with the speed of my mirrorless digital camera body.

3. So given all of this, why do we love the film and it’s aesthetic?
   • Film is authentic, I think in the world of AI everything we start to crave something that is more real, untouched, and genuine. Film photograph provides that realness factor to a photo.
   • Film is nostalgic- think of your parents wedding photos… or maybe you grandparents. I am still blown away by the film photos that were taken at weddings. Maybe in a few years I would be more confident to take even more of the wedding day photos strictly on film, but currently if I had to use just film photography for a wedding we might get some questionable results, not to add that film is SO expensive!  Each one of my film images comes out to about $5 – $7.
   • The process of photographing with film has taught me to be decisive, selective and to use even more consistent lighting.
     • With a digital camera I might keep photographing even though a pose isn’t quite right etc. but am I willing to spend $7 and waste one of 15 chances on a roll of film on a photo that is not going to turn out? No way. With film I look over the whole scene, I notice little details and make sure everything including my exposure is perfect. And even then they don’t all turn out but I at least have learned to try to perfect things before I take the picture. That has then translated to how I use digital cameras now too, being more attentive to detail, having a good 10-15 ideas for unique portraits at a given moment so I don’t waste more time or opportunities.  
4. So is the film trend here to stay? On a mainstream level I am not sure, trends come and go so quickly and the wedding industry is fast moving and innovative. However I can speak for my business and the effect that film has had on our process and I can confidently say the the aesthetic of editing images in a film inspired style is here to stay for myself and my team!
   • Currently I photograph with both film and digital, while my associates photograph on strictly digital camera bodies. I do hope to teach them to incorporate film one day as well, but that will be a large investment of time and resources to purchase the camera bodies and training etc. I have been very happy with our film style of editing going with our associate’s work and how that is coming together! Maybe I will have more updates on film and our processes in years to come.
   • A note on what it means to have film inspired editing, or how I edit our images to look like film. Once I receive the film scans back from our lab I pull those into the same editing program and put them side by side to our digital images and I adjust the temperature and contrast of the digital image to more closely reflect the film image. Over time I’ve created presets that work well with this style and that’s what gives me the starting point for wedding and engagement sneak peeks or previews too.
   • My goal while editing is to closely reflect the aesthetic of film into all of our final images. To me and my artistic vision, film inspired tones and character of images are the most true sense of timeless. And that’s what we all want with weddings, images that will be stunning years and years from now more than fulfilling a certain trend.

In Conclusion

I hoped you enjoyed hearing my heart and rambling about what I’ve learned through film photography and how that can be added to wedding days whether through actual film or by the editing style matching the film itself. Thanks for listening! 

xo, Taylor Nicole