Why We Shoot Film
A not-so-brief analysis of our steamy relationship to all things analog.
Self portrait. Isle of Skye, Scotland. Shot on Ilford XP2.
Let’s start with “What.”
Film is the magical celluloid strip of joy that predates digital cameras. If you’re lucky enough to have achieved a certain age, you may remember disposable cameras and the childhood tomfoolery they often captured. Maybe your parents (or grandparents) had a film camera. Or perhaps you’re new to the idea of film and wondering/hoping that it’s “still a thing.” One thing is certain: the look of analog film photography is something ingrained into our collective consciousness even if we never think about it. It’s the first and - in our opinion - best method humankind came up with to capture what it feels like to be alive.
If you’re getting married and want to lean into that chemical legacy, we don’t blame you.
Generally speaking, film tends to encompass some common formats like 35mm, 120/medium format, instant (e.g. Polaroid), large format, and a small handful of others we occasionally play with. It’s truly a playground and we’re rompin’ in it.
We shoot film because it gets out of the way.
The inconsistencies of film mirror the unpredictability of life - all the joy, quiet, chaos, and love.
A subtle light leak, a touch of motion blur, or soft focus on a tender moment – film champions and celebrates these subtle nuances. In doing so, it poetically echoes the spontaneity of being alive, and we think everyone subconsciously feels this. Analog formats somehow translate that visceral and fleeting feeling of living in the moment, which is something everyone seems to feel that we’re losing as a culture (cue old man yelling at clouds). Most notably, we believe the inherent beauty of film goes beyond what we've captured with digital over the past 12 years, and - while this isn’t an anti-digital take - we simply can’t get enough of it.
Film images, once developed and scanned, are beautiful straight out of camera. It doesn’t really require presets and hyper-technical camera settings to make it intriguing… in fact, many digital presets out there aim to emulate film itself. Film naturally pops out 〰️ avant-garde 〰️ on its own without the added steps. So when we receive our scans back from the lab, we’re always a bit surprised with what we get back and joyfully pumped to begin taking it a step further in the editing room. Our approach to editing is contextual - we view it as a process of enhancing what's already present, to embellish and elevate the preexisting drama of the image. Sometimes we barely touch it, and sometimes we edit the crap out of it to take a feeling and balloon it.
Some people are “editing purists” when it comes to film (we think that’s fine). We’re not (we think that’s also fine).
That said, 90% of the magic happens when we press the shutter. We don’t want our gear to pull us away from the present moment, because we value the experience and process of both the moment and image-taking. We think film does just that, and creates a holistic experience, for both us and our subject. Fewer digi-doodads means fewer digi-problems.
In short, film encourages us to relinquish any expectations we may be holding on to.
It prompts us to set aside notions of how a photo should look and to embrace the spontaneity of it, much like life. In order to do that well, we have to shift our mindset to celebrate the unexpected imperfections of film, because like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.
And to wrap it all up, film cameras are just more fun for us. No other way to say it. The 80+ years leading up to the digital era were filled with fascinating developments – from standard 35mm formats to weird ones, wacky contraptions, and playful toy cameras. This rich history of off-the-wall cameras offers a spectrum of creative possibilities, making the process of creating our work into delightful play rather than “just another job.”
Lasting Significance
Film has an ability to preserve the raw emotions that people yearn to relive in a consistently unique way. It’s a beast that can’t be tamed, and remains a timeless medium against the ever-shifting landscape of photography trends. We have nothing against digital photography, but we feel like it doesn’t preserve that visceral feeling of a moment in the same way. Film offers something else, and it’s a thing that can’t be duplicated.
We just don’t want our photos to succumb to the transient nature of trends that ultimately fade into oblivion, and we wager you don’t want that either.
That’s precisely why we think people are returning back to film.
We hear story after story about how people’s cherished memories are passed down through family photo albums, stacks of 4x6 prints in shoeboxes, and Super 8 videos. There’s something inherently human about passing down stories through imagery. We’ve told stories through cave drawings, oil paintings, charcoal sketches, and then film photography.
This feeling we’re referring to is often labeled as "nostalgia,” a nod and acknowledgment to the distinct old-time feeling and aesthetic that people adore. While that word has certainly been hijacked by the juggernauts of the wedding photography world, it’s a worthy term that carries real weight.
The struggle with talking about film is that it transcends articulation. People are drawn to it because they recognize that it captures something intangibly profound.
Even our attempt to express why we love film falls short, as there's no perfect way to describe how film renders reality.
Film is for those who cherish the act of remembering, and we believe that its impact extends far beyond the sharp, crisp, and technologically "correct" pressures of the photography world (Pro tip: “Correct” is made up).
Carrying on a Legacy
We’re certainly biased, but we think that photography reached its historical zenith between the 1960s and 1990s, marking the golden years of film photography.
During this era, monumental milestones defined the art, documenting the evolution of the medium. Iconic cameras like the Nikon F, introduced in the 1960s, revolutionized the industry by setting standards for reliability and versatility. Polaroid rose in popularity in the 70s. The 1980s witnessed the advent of autofocus technology, and so on and so forth. You get the idea.
Beyond specific camera developments, the 60s to 90s also encapsulated a period of creative exploration. Photographers experimented with unique film formats, filters, shooting techniques, and development processes. As the popularity of film photography began to rise, so did attention to photographers in the caliber of Ansel Adams and Saul Leiter (who still inspire us to this day). There are countless others. We admire this legacy and, with modesty, aim to carry it forward.
As we’ve continued to evolve beyond this golden age of film photography, companies have largely turned their attention towards the new possibilities of digital photography. And while many great things have been achieved in the digital landscape, something keeps pulling us back to film. We feel as though film is an heirloom that’s been passed down to us, and makes us feel like shepherds of a craft. We hope to continue the legacy of the photographers who used the same medium before us (knowing we stand squarely on their shoulders).
The fundamentals of film have persevered for over a hundred years and has largely remained unchanged, despite the emergence of new film cameras by contemporary companies.
We are, in essence, carrying and passing on a nearly 200-year-old art form, and we do our best to treat it with the reverence it deserves.
Film is a testament to what humans have achieved, and we believe it’s an art form that somehow reveals a four-dimensional space. When we see an image, it feels like simultaneously seeing through a child’s eyes, an adult’s awareness, and an elder’s wisdom. A form of time-travel, so to speak.
A Resurgence for the books
There’s no denying that there’s been an increasingly renewed interest in film over the past few years.
We’re not exactly sure how or why it happened, but it felt like this surge in popularity happened overnight. We love it, and want everyone to experience the magic of film for themselves. The prevailing theory in our household (van… hold?) is that we live in a time of extreme dissociation and disconnection from ourselves and others. There are those, however, who have noticed this and have a sense of longing for something we never truly got to have. The German language has a word for this: sehnsucht. It means (and we’re paraphrasing) a melancholic longing for an experience you can’t name.
Today, we’re assaulted by stimulus and inundated with distraction. This constant form of restlessly existing can feel like we’re trapped in a stasis that begs for us to escape and touch something real. It’s the same reason we’re all feeling “cooped up” post-COVID, or why it feels like like a drug withdrawal to go a day without our phone.
Film isn’t the answer to these things, of course.
But it’s a symptom of wanting to live closer to reality.
A breath of something fresh.
Film’s Cheeky quirks
For starters, film is fun as hell.
It’s unpredictable, yet consistent. Grainy, yet sharp enough. It encourages us to be more creative and judicial with what and why we shoot. The colors are beautiful and unique across every film stock (and there’s always new ones to try out).
The spectrum of possibilities with film extends infinitely across light, color, and depth, evading the constraints of digital pixelation. It resonates with the boundless nature of the human eye, which doesn't impose binary bits on the world it sees. Film, with its sorcerous chemical alchemy, mirrors the limitless beauty of perceiving the world through unfiltered eyes. Dramatic? Sure. We digress.
We personally prefer chemicals over computers to seamlessly blend light, color, and depth at an infinitesimal level to create our photos. It’s not 8K or tack sharp, and we don’t want it to be (and your eyes can’t really detect 8K anyways. That’s not a metric we care about.).
Tales of Analog reliability
The trustworthiness of a camera doesn't hinge on a singular unit; it thrives in redundancy.
Redundancy is achieved for us in three ways:
1.) Using multiple cameras (and carrying too many rolls of film to count).
2.) Keeping our gear spread across the two of us to ensure we’re capable of documenting all moments
3.) Shooting crucial moments together (this ensure the moments are captured across cameras and film rolls).
With film, the image is created right there when we press the shutter. Light from the sun makes it way across the cosmos just to bounce off the subject and directly into our lenses. And there you have it - an image! So concerns such as images not writing to SD cards, accidental overwriting, and faulty hard drives are virtually obsolete. We think the reliability of our film setup surpasses the digital counterparts we used for years.
The reliability of analog technology lies in the use of tried and true physical mechanisms. Film cameras boast gears, levels, and panels designed to endure the harshest conditions - like literal war zones, for example. Extreme, but true. Film cameras were made like literal tanks because the delicacy of film mandates a resilient camera body. The camera itself serves as the film negative’s shield against the external environment, and most*** film cameras we’ve held and shot are made of solid metal.
Take Alex's treasured Leica M3 for instance; a brassy-ass marvel that exemplifies the superior quality of film camera construction. The same camera model was the standard used by the Army, Marines, and Air Force during the Vietnam War. A medium-format Hasselblad camera was the first camera to be taken into space (we have one of these too).
Reliability starts with our gear, so we treat our equipment with the same level of care as we do with our pup, Ranger. Without reliable gear, our promises are just empty words. All our gear undergoes meticulous testing a month before any event we photograph, and we employ a militia of cameras to document all of your precious memories with.
***Not all cameras are made of metal, such as point-and-shoots from the 80s and 90s. We use these, too, but never rely on them 100%.
Common Inquiries about Film Wedding Photography
Q: Is Film As Reliable As Digital?
Yes! And in some particular ways, we feel it’s even more reliable than digital.
Multiple backup cameras and twice the amount of film required are our steadfast companions on every wedding day.
We store exposed and fresh film in multiple locations, i.e. on our persons or in multiple camera bags (with accompanying airtags). Although this seems counterintuitive, it’s the logic of not having all of your eggs in one basket. So, we diversify our gear to document the same moment across multiple cameras.
Our approach to backing up film photos mirrors the meticulous redundancy we employed for our digital images, back before we switched to all analog documentation. Redundancy is key to ensuring the most foolproof protection for life’s precious moments. The question of what happens if something goes wrong to your images is not exclusive to film—they are the same concerns for digital photography, just another flavor. There’s always a worse-case-scenario for both film and digital photos. And in both cases, redundancy is the solution.
When entrusting your film to a lab, the feeling of reliance is akin to backing up images onto a hard drive. The key lies in duplicating your process, introducing redundancy at every conceivable stage, and aligning with high-quality labs.
Q: How trustworthy is your lab?
Labs such as Boutique Film Lab in the United States and Gulabi in the UK operate on standards that extend well beyond the care expected for individual weddings. They cater to companies, publications, political events, and photojournalists on contract, maintaining impeccable care and precision.
Imagine being in the shoes of these labs—they uphold standards that go above and beyond, and rightly so. Their commitment aligns with global expectations, making them reliable partners not just for individual events, but for businesses and critical occasions worldwide. It's a symbiotic relationship where our thorough process ensures that even during international weddings, we have local lab partners, sparing our exposed film from airport security x-rays (fairly certain these egregious violations of privacy are a demonic invention and a personal affront to film everywhere).
Before entrusting labs with your precious wedding photos, we meticulously vet them to ensure they meet our stringent criteria. This collaborative standard ensures that your memories, encapsulated in film, receive the utmost care and protection throughout the entire process.
Q: Does film hold up in low light scenarios?
Yes! Certain film stocks excel in dim settings, preserving the authenticity of ambient lighting, and some film stocks are better for flash photography. Film doesn't distort the ambiance; rather, it embraces the available light to create an authentic visual narrative. That’s not to say film is perfect, though. You can’t be shooting 200 ASA indoors with only string lights if you want to take photos that actually come out properly exposed. We like to utilize the tried and true Portra 800, Cinestill 800, and Ilford Delta 3200 for low ambient lighting.
Flash film photography is most often used for situations devoid of ambient light or when an artistic touch is desired. Film's response to low light is not just technical; it introduces unpredictable quirks that infuse character into the images. These nuances, unique to film, unfold as a form of chemical drama, adding an irreplaceable charm to low-light scenarios. Embracing these quirks is our way of infusing your photos with a distinctive and authentic allure. Our favorite film stock for flash photography is Kodak Portra 400, Cinestill 400D, and Kodak Gold.
Q: Will we receive fewer photos?
Let's reframe the question: it's not about receiving fewer photos; it's about receiving better ones. The key distinction between digital and film lies in the focus on capturing potentially fewer, yet more impactful images.
While digital cameras allow for an abundance of shots, film imposes a constraint. With only 24 to 36 exposures per roll, each frame becomes precious. This limitation reminds and compels us to treat each image with intentionality and as a standalone piece of art.
The number of images you receive is tailored to the unique dynamics of your event. While we guarantee a specified range, the actual count varies based on the richness of moments across a given period of time. Each wedding is distinctly unique and can’t be standardized, so we meet this variability with a matching approach.
In the end, the number of photos matters less than their ability to encapsulate the moments you cherish most. We believe that quality triumphs over quantity.
We’ve received exactly zero complaints on image count, and we believe that’s because of the standard of image quality we hold ourselves to.
Q: Will Our Photos Take Forever to Get Back to Us?
No, it won’t take forever. If you want to get into the details, we meticulously edit all of the images we deliver and much of the time is devoted to that. We also account for working turnarounds with our trusted labs. Having afforded a time window that includes those things, we deliver in 10-16 weeks.
We also make sure to send you previews earlier than that as soon as we can assemble them post-development. We promise that’s a very fun day :)
Q: How Do We Receive Our Images?
Your cherished memories will be delivered in the form of high-resolution JPEGs, preserving the native dimensions and ratios inherent to the film or any cropped choices we make. These images will make themselves at home in a meticulously organized online gallery, offering you a seamless experience for downloading and sharing with your loved ones.
To tailor the gallery to the unique narrative of your event, we employ an intuitive organization strategy. For weddings with distinct parts or multi-day celebrations, we arrange the gallery by relevant segments—whether it's by moments, days, rehearsals, weddings, or post-wedding festivities. The structure adapts to the essence of your event.
Fear not the ephemeral nature of digital backups. Your gallery remains active for a minimum of 2 years, ensuring accessibility for you and your dear ones. Beyond the digital realm, we safeguard your film negatives with meticulous archival care. This physical embodiment of your images on celluloid sheets undergoes preservation in a secure environment—a dark, dry, temperature-controlled room. The safety extends further with digital backups in the cloud and across multiple hard drives.
Q: What do you do with the negatives?
Unlike the vulnerability of digital backups reliant on binary code (which we use regardless… redundancy is king), film negatives provide a tangible, secure representation of your memories. Shielded from environmental elements, they act as an additional layer of protection. In the unlikely event of issues with scans, hard drives, or online backups, the film negatives stand ready for rescanning and reediting, reaffirming the resilience of your precious moments.
Jump into an analog pool with us
If you honestly read all that, we’re A.) impressed, and B.) eager to chat with you if you’re interested in having your nuptials documented on this age-old format. If you need to absorb a bit more, gander the portfolio or learn more about the weirdos behind the shutter.
