I’ve been shooting weddings fairly sporadically for about 8-9 years now, I’ve always just shot them with the digital, but have been finding this increasingly uninspiring. Yesterday, armed with a my Leica M-A, M3, 50mm ‘cron, 90mm elmar and a couple of rolls of Portra 400, I took the first step to addressing that sense of being uninspired and shot a pre-wedding shoot entirely on film.
Processed at my local high street D&P I am sure there is room for improvement in terms of the potential for quality from Portra – I had to do a little touching up to get the colours a little better, but, all in all I am fairly happy with the outcome. What’s more important is that I didn’t find myself concerned that I wasn’t going to get the shots I wanted. I suspect this was helped by the fact that I was only a second photographer to James Greenoff who organised, set up the shoot and was there armed with a stack of kit, but to be honest I didn’t thing about that either really, I just got on with what I had to get on with. The irony is, I am so much more comfortable with film cameras than digital cameras these days, that I really shouldn’t have anything to worry about just shooting film… Hopefully this is definitely one of the first step toward doing a lot more film shooting for work, it certainly made me a lot happier doing it!
Anyway, here are the results from the day… Shot on a working farm, so I’ve included some of the shots from the times in between those we spent with the couple
Some more shots from the day here
Cheers for reading
Hamish
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Gábor on A pre-wedding shoot on a farm…
Comment posted: 17/05/2015
I have a little personal story which is slightly related I think.
The photographer who shoot on my pre-wedding photo session knew that I love the signature of portra, so he processed his files to mimic the look and feel of this film. Most shoots were quite nice, but some really had troubles with really strange colors on our lips etc. He corrected it after all, but I think it would have been much easier to simply shoot portra at the first place.
It is interesting that today there is a definite need for the feel of film photographs. I think it has to do something about our memories how we remember "real" photographs. Therefore many wants to emulate them. But it is actually not too hard to use real thing.
Your photos are by the way quite lovely. I think it really should not concern you to leave the digital bag at home occasionally.
Cheers, Gábor
Comment posted: 17/05/2015
Jason on A pre-wedding shoot on a farm…
Comment posted: 20/05/2015
I came across your site ages ago when I was reading up about the Ricoh GR1v and found your review and loved your photos - you have a great eye. I bought the GR1v and love the camera although I still love my M6/35 Type 3 Cron a lot more - but you can't beat having that quality of lens/camera in your pocket at all times. I am still getting used to framing with a 28mm lens as it really does take a different eye.
Anyway love the shots as always but agreed about the colour being slightly off - not bad of course but not what it could be. I thought I would say something as I noticed above that you were talking to someone in the UK and though I might mention UK Film Lab as they do some superb work that is on par with RPL in the US. I'm guessing that's probably who you mean but if not they are well worth looking at - Christian is amazing photographer too.
Comment posted: 20/05/2015
Comment posted: 20/05/2015
Comment posted: 20/05/2015
Comment posted: 20/05/2015
Comment posted: 20/05/2015