WHY FILM?

My earliest memories of photography revolve around family members loading 35mm film into their analogue cameras. My parents spent most of my childhood obsessively cataloguing my and my brother’s existence with Pentax cameras, and when my grandfather was alive, I remember that he always had a camera nearby.

I first started taking photos on a bright red Fisher Price camera, capturing wonky, out-of-focus still-life images of my stuffed animals and dolls. My mom would get our film developed at Wal-Mart or Walgreen’s, and I would eagerly flip through the shiny prints before taping them to my walls or sticking them in my Creative Memories scrapbooks.

Even though I spent most of my adolescence taking point & shoot selfies on a pixelated camcorder, there was always a part of me that wanted to return to film photography. I learned how to develop film in a darkroom in high school and college, and I longed to be a freelance photographer who shot Polaroids at weddings. It became a romantic dream that felt distant and unobtainable. But always, I longed for the analogue days of my youth.

FILM FAQs

FILM VS DIGITAL

FILM STOCK EXAMPLES

Analogue film photography has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic, coming back from near-extinction with a vengeance. While digital photography is as powerful and accessible as its ever been, many photographers have been returning to the roots of the craft, exploring and experimenting with older mediums and vintage equipment.

In part, this is because analogue photographs feel different than digital. The colors are notoriously richer, the texture of the images feels more dreamlike, and the process is much slower. There’s intentionality and technique behind analogue photography that doesn’t exist in a digital process.

More than that, it feels like returning to a simpler time. People want their lives photographed like generations past, with fading prints in photo albums and boxes of negatives stowed in closets. They want their weddings to feel like their parents’. They want their children to grow up like they did.

Many of us are searching for tangible reality in a world that has become consumed by the digital ether, and film is an opportunity to hold our lives in our hands.

FAQs

Why is film so expensive?

The short answer is capitalism.

The long answer is that it uses more physical materials than a digital process. While a digital set-up is expensive on the front end (ie costly camera bodies and lenses), analogue is usually expensive on the backend. The cost of physical film rolls are at an all-time high, but on top of purchasing the film itself, one must also pay for developing and scanning if they don’t DIY the process. Depending on how much film you shoot, this gets costly very very quickly.

What’s the difference between 35, 120, and 110?

These numbers refer to the size of each individual frame of film, physically. The most common size, 24mm x 35mm, is what your parents probably used, or the film you’d find in a basic disposable camera. Medium format cameras use bigger film, 60mm x 60mm or 120, for more detail. Baby 110 film is extra small, only 13mm x 17mm, and it’s often super textured and grainy.

DO WE GET TO KEEP ANY OF THE NEGATIVES?

Most clients don’t handle any of my film negatives because they’re meaningless to non-photographers, and they’re comparable to digital RAW files. I send high quality scans of each final image, so you shouldn’t need the physical negatives unless you want it for your records. If you have interest in keeping your negatives, definitely let me know! The only exception to this is instant film like Polaroids and Fuji Instax. I mail these prints for you to keep after I’ve done all my scanning.

What’s a film stock?

The easiest (and most annoying) way to explain it is to think of this as the color filter or preset you want to use on your image. (I know. Barf. Hated that.) It’s the color makeup, the light sensitivity, the overall look and feel of the image your capturing. Is it warm? Cool? Grainy? Black and white? Vintage? True to tone? The possibilities are endless. In fact, most of the filters and presets you see on Instagram are based on film stocks that were created decades ago by people at Kodak and Fujifilm.

For visual examples of my favorite stocks, see below.

Can i request certain types of film coverage?

Absolutely! Most of my clients have no clue how film works or what film coverage they want, so I usually decide based on personal preferences and what I believe most suits each project. If you have strong film preferences (camera, film stock, film size, etc) or just general ideas on what colors or vibes you want, please let me know!

WHO DEVELOPS AND SCANS YOUR FILM?

My trusted lab for developing is Boutique Film Lab in Nashville! They often scan my film, but sometimes I do it myself with an Epson scanner and a little help from Negative Lab Pro. My favorite place to buy film is Reformed Film Lab.