why i do what i do

 

 

Ok. So you saw my most recent post of the breathtakingly beautiful (and pregnant) Kat, right? *sigh* Gorgeous. That was just a peek at her entire session, and here I am, just a few days later, posting about her AGAIN. I know, what’s with this new girl crush, you’re asking me, right? Not only am I married, but she’s pregnant, yet I can’t seem to stop looking at her photos.

Nah. Just kidding.

I picked up her film prints and scans today, and I wanted to show you something. This is kind of a big deal, so listen up.

My new business goals: smaller weddings, more portraits, blahbety-blah-blah, right? Well, no. One of the changes I’m most excited about (as you should be) is that I’m now, “officially,” shooting a combination of digital and film on *all* my sessions, including weddings. I’ve been doing this on most weddings for the past year or so anyway, but this year, I’m making it official. I have a few film cameras to choose from (some are quite fancy!), and sometimes a client has a particular request, but if not, I may bring the Canon 35mm or the Fuji mini-Instax. Kind of depends on what sort of vibe I get on how the session’s going to go. (Yes, I said “vibe” and yes, I said it with a straight face, so stop giggling. I mean it now.)

What you see here are two photos of Kat, taken at, obviously the same angle and about the same time. I wanted to give you a quick lesson on the difference between film and digital and why I choose to shoot both.

Now, both of these photos are unaltered; no photoshop. All I did was crop the digital so that it more closely matched the film scan. (That’s the other thing here: you can’t really fully appreciate the film shot unless you’re looking at a film print, and obviously your monitor doesn’t do that for you.) But there’s a big enough difference that you’ll catch my drift if you pay attention.

The digital photo is the one on top, and the film–ta da!–is on the bottom. This was a low-light situation and I wasn’t using flash, so my ISO on the digital shot is cranked up to 1600, and my film speed was 800. This means there’s a bit of grain in each of the photos, but I don’t mind that at all. There’s a time and place for smooth, shiny pictures but Kat’s bedroom during a quick session in the middle of her moving residences isn’t one of them.

Now, film is the kind of medium that you have to love for your own reasons. There’s nothing I can tell you that’s going to make you love the look of film. I know people who shoot nothing but film, and that’s awesome, but there’s a lot to be said for the lovely benefits of digital.

As I’ve written before, there’s something very…precious about film. I have the negative to her film shot. There’s one negative and right now, one scan. In other words, in the digital world, that negative is kind of precious. The ubiquitousness of a digital image sometimes (and I really do mean, sometimes) makes it less precious. Put it this way: If you have shoot your kid’s birthday with a digital camera and take 500 photos (I know some who can go 5 times that) then you have lots to choose from. If you shoot a few rolls of film at your kid’s birthday party, you’re going to shoot more carefully. You’re going to shoot with intent. You can’t shoot 500 photos because that’s a ridiculous amount of film (not to mention the cost).

I hope you’re still with me. I’m really good having this conversation in person; I’m not sure how good I am on the blog. I’m sure you’ll let me know.

Having grown up in the 60s and 70s, I had only film cameras and film prints. So a film shot is automatically somehow nostalgic for me, whether it’s a shot of me or someone I know or not. (Funny when you think about it because the whole Lomo crowd are young enough to be my kids.)

Even if you didn’t grow up on film, there is a quality about it; a richness, that you simply cannot get with pixels no matter how many how crammed in there. Film is lush. Blur is beautiful on film. Digital-only shooters pixel-peep (a term for someone who enlarges their photos beyond “normal” size to determine if they’re in focus). Pixel-peeping is BAD. It takes your concentration away from what you shot and leaves you staring at a bunch of oblongs that are now abstract and have no connection at all to what made you press the shutter in the first place.

I’m going to try and wrap this up because I have the vague feeling that I’m starting to ramble (although that could be the Nyquil).

Here are some things to consider:

Most of my photographer friends who shoot only digital all tell me that they rarely print out the photos and put them in an album. They languish on hard drives for years and years until they’re one day archived onto a DL-DVD.

See? Where’s the romance in that kind of talk?

The photographers I know who shoot film have invested a little more into the shot (basically, film & processing). Remember, probably more intent in that shooting, so they can’t wait to see it. On the day the prints are due (if they don’t develop themselves) they’re SO EXCITED to get it from the lab, they get there early on the day it’s due. They look at each print over and over, they scan them and put them up on Flickr and put them into all the film groups (it’s true, I do it too).  Those prints have a much better chance of getting into a photo album.

Does this make sense? Is this resonating with any of you, or is this a “Susan thing”? I’d love to hear opinions from my photographer friends (you know who you are) and from total non-photographers. I wish we were all sitting in a cafe so I could pass these prints around and someone could buy me a latte. Then I think my point would get across better.

Ok, now *that’s* really the Nyquil talking.

Lemme know.