my love affair with film

I discovered One Love Photo yesterday and have been reading through their archive nonstop. I'm telling you this because reading their blog has reminded me how much I love shooting film (even though it's hard to find developing I can afford these days). If you remember, I may have a problem in that my cameras are overrunning me and taking over my life. I really need to start shooting film again, if only to make my stash dwindle a little more.

There really is nothing quite like shooting film. It is not instant gratification at all; there are no assurances that what I've done will come out. I love to shoot expired film, which just adds to the surprise when I get it developed. Picking up a roll of film is like graduation: I get to see the fruit of my labors and celebrate what I've accomplished.

All of these photos are from 2008. I scanned them all as soon as I got the prints from the lab.


























There was even a period of time where I had no digital camera and shot exclusively film.









I also shot my first wedding exclusively with film. I am so thankful to Kat and Derek for giving me the opportunity to experiment and having faith that I would deliver amazing photos. (Shooting their wedding was part of my gift to them.)

it's not *what* I love but *who*

In the process of fishing out my equipment for this post, I found myself flipping through a photo album and reflecting on love: the way I love shooting with film because it’s a completely different tactile experience, how special I feel when I get a chance to capture people in love, and the excitement that comes with showing the world what I love.

Within my album were the two shots I kept from the wedding of one of my best friends. More specifically, my two favorite shots from the first (and currently only) wedding I’ve ever shot. Kat and Derek got married December 2008. I know the wedding wasn’t quite what she had in mind, but I think it was absolutely wonderful nonetheless. In some previous posts, I introduced you to Kat and her son, Preston. She and Derek married when they did because shortly after getting engaged, they found out that they were expecting their handsome boy and she was kind of far along. So rather than wait a few years until they could save up for the fairy tale wedding *and* still be able to provide for their son, Kat and Derek got married at the courthouse. But rather than having a blah shotgun courthouse wedding, they tried to make it as wonderful as possible. Since the room usually used for weddings was being painted anyway, we talked the clerk officiating into marrying them outside the courthouse. Their first kiss as husband and wife happened under a palm tree and a beautiful sky. I photographed Kat and Derek holding hands so you could see the wedding bands in front of her pregnant belly. I wanted to give them photos to show that they had been in love for years before they got engaged and before they started their family. I hoped that I’d be able to capture on film the love I’ve known about since the day I met her.


The next page in the album conveys a different type of love. These photos were on the tail end of the second roll from Kat’s wedding. My old digital camera was broken and I was waiting for a miracle to make it so I could have a functional digital camera again. I decided to take one of my film cameras on my nightly photo walk because I was going through serious withdrawal and my brother decided to tag along. We ended up at one of the neighborhood lakes, watching the ducks glide around in the descending twilight. I had the fisheye attachment on my lens and was sort of experimenting, not expecting these shots to be anything special. In a lot of ways, they’re not; they’re just more shots of the ducks at the lake. But being able to see how my little brother went with me makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


I will acknowledge that my photos of my album aren’t the best. They don’t need to be. As long as the people I love know that I love them, it’s good enough for me.