Why shoot Film Photography in 2020?

The Corona Virus Pandemic has undoubtedly been a terrible time for a lot of people. Personally, I have seen all of my work cancelled which has left me with a lot of free time. Rather than simply binge on box sets, I have tried to use this time productively. One of the things that I’ve wanted to do for a while now is to get back into shooting film. On a side note, I will be making a series of videos about this on my YouTube channel, so keep an eye out for them.

Why Film?

The obvious question for a lot of people, is why shoot film when you have a perfectly good digital camera? The simple answer, for me at least, is to achieve a look & feel that has eluded me for years. Looking at my images, it’s fairly clear that I always try to achieve an element of nostalgia, shooting in soft light and adding grain etc. to make the images feel older than they actually are.

That’s all well and good apart from the fact that digital images tend to be over sharp and well, are clearly digital images. This might sound counter-intuitive to a lot of photographers, ‘you don’t want sharp images?’ - in a way, no. You only have to look at any family album with 70’s, 80’s or 90’s and look at those blurry images to get an instant nostalgia fix! The brain seems to make a correlation between those images and something in our past that always seemed to feel like a ‘better time’. Now, this is obviously not factual, but something in those images makes us feel a sense of comfort - and that is something that I’m always striving to achieve.

OK, so get an old 35mm Camera…

Well, again, things are never quite that straightforward. I’ve shot enough 35mm in the past to understand it’s benefits and limitations. So straight away, I knew it wasn’t going to cut it. So I did what any ‘want-to-be’ hipster photographer would do and went straight to medium format and in particular, the Mamiya 645 Pro. Again, I will make a separate video on the perks & quirks of this particular camera but the simple benefits are that it feels modern enough that I could use it without thinking too much and more importantly, it’s a 120mm film camera - and I want that medium format goodness!

I was always sceptical over people saying that you ‘just can’t replicate the medium format look’ and I still don’t fully subscribe to it, but I do agree that the extra negative size has its own benefits over its 35mm counterpart. Most notably, I love the fall off in the out of focus areas that are very difficult to replicate on 35mm. That combined with the go-to Kodak Portra stocks, is a winning combination for me.

OK, so you just want to be a Hipster?

Well, I do have a beard and more than one check shirt. However, the truth is no. The camera, the medium and even the subject matter are all just ‘tools’ to provoke an emotion. I am not trying to get ‘Insta famous’ - far from it. I have simply found a way to translate the feelings of nostalgia that I want to achieve into an image in the most natural way.

That being said, there is obviously a bit of a trend for photographers turning to film in an attempt to show their credentials as a fully-fledged master of light! Again though, it is not about achieving any acclaim for me, it is simply to understand the process better and to take full control, from start to finish, of the images that I create. So that means I am also developing my own film and scanning my own images - again, more videos on this soon on my YouTube channel.

So no more digital then?

Far from it, I actually still carry my digital camera even when I am shooting film. I will obviously be shooting digital for client work - though I am interested in offering commissions on film, that would be fun! The whole process of shooting film is merely to help convey a metaphor in my images, in the same way, that some might choose to shoot purely black & white because it makes their images feel more ‘honest’. Digital is still absolutely a necessary tool but film simply allows me another option, depending on the subject matter.

What’s next?

I will be shooting a lot more film in the interim and will also be travelling to some of the lesser shot areas of Birmingham to find the kind of gritty, run-down scenes that I like. As previously mentioned, I am developing and scanning at home so I will be looking at simplifying and improving that process too.

Overall, shooting film in 2020 is a great new area for me to explore and allows me to keep developing my own skills. It allows me to slow down a little and work on my composition skills and also improve my ability to meter and read light. All of these will hugely benefit my commercial work and throughout the process, I will, of course, bring you with me to share my experiences and knowledge. I am really excited and glad that I can take at least one tiny positive from the crazy times that we are living in.