How did I get started?

What led me to this point? Why am I writing a blog on my very own website, trying to get people to engage with what I am doing? Why am I trying to get people to book me to take pictures of them?

Because I love it, and I want to do more of it.

Euridge Manor

Taken on Ilford HP5+ with a Pentax K2

It all started late in 2022… In the shower… Where I tend to do my best thinking.

I have been shooting film for over 6 years at this point and I have always loved it, from the minute I first started. However, as with lots of things, Covid and the Lockdown (which sounds like a dodgy 90’s band!) put a pause on my film photography fun. Shooting film has always been expensive compared to digital, so I have always been limited to how often I could shoot it, but being unemployed during the lockdown made it completely impossible to do.

Luckily for me I managed to find employment later in 2020, which allowed me to ease back into my favourite pastime, but I had to be careful with how often I shot, and I was usually left with a dilemma; develop the roll I had just finished, or buy another roll to keep shooting? I generally built up a collection of exposed rolls before I would get them developed, meaning there was a long time between taking the picture and seeing the image.

But… back to 2022, and the shower.

I was thinking to myself; what could I do to allow me to photograph more often? It was something I would often think about, but with two young children and a mortgage, I just couldn’t think of how it would be possible. Then it hit me. Instead of paying to take pictures, get people to pay me to take pictures!

My brother was getting married in 2023; so I started to wonder how I would operate a photography business. What could I offer? And would anyone be interested in film photography for their wedding?

Overlooking Plymouth Sound

Taken on Kodak Portra 400 with a Leica M6

I started to do some research online; beginning with some google searches to see if there are many (if any!) other film wedding photographers out there, before I moved onto the Facebook groups. I found very little to begin with, but I did come across a few ‘hybrid’ shooters; people who generally shoot digital but take a film camera along as well to get that ‘classic, vintage look’.

I joined some wedding photography groups on Facebook and asked some questions to see what views other people had on the subject. With the sheer volume of wedding photography groups and the large amount of members in each group, I expected my posts and my questions to generally move through without getting much response, I was surprised to find that I got plenty of engagement, most of it rather unpleasant.

It turns out wedding photography is an extremely saturated market.

I guess it makes sense; modern digital cameras have come a long way, mixed with the post processing abilities of Photoshop, and even more so with the introduction of AI. It is so much easier for someone with little to no photography ability or background to throw their hat into the ring as a wedding photographer, or for family members to take the photos on the day instead of a professional photographer. I’m not saying that all new wedding photographers are without ability, but during my market research prior to starting my business, I found myself to be fairly underwhelmed by what I saw! This, mixed with the number of existing, and very successful, photographers, leads to a huge amount of supply to a relatively static demand.

New photographers tend to get ignored in the groups (unless they ask for some ‘constructive criticism’, then they get it!), but as I was offering something different, it felt very much like I was stepping on toes. I very quickly got into some ‘back and forth’ with experienced people, which made me feel like starting a photography business was a huge mistake. Luckily for me, for every ten people that tried to put me off, there was one person that was really helpful and offered some great advice.

The Wisteria at Euridge Manor

Taken on Kodak Portra 400 with a Leica M6

That advice to me… was to keep going.

It gave me the push that I needed to make the jump. I continued to ask questions in the groups, but I now had a desire to get my business up and running and to prove everyone wrong. I always like a challenge, and this was going to be a massive one; I had to learn quickly how to be a wedding photographer, find out what couples wanted from a wedding photographer, and to try and convince people that I was the wedding photographer for them.

I began to gather the equipment I needed, and reached out to established photographers to see if I could shadow and learn from them, or to see if I could come along and build my own portfolio in exchange for any help I could offer, and to give the couples some additional images for nothing. Contacting people directly was a bit different to the feedback I received in the groups; most people just didn’t reply. Those that did were rather polite and offered some really helpful advice, but generally weren’t able to offer me anything more than that.

After a while I started feeling like I was getting nowhere, and every email response I received essentially became a ‘no thank you, but good luck’. Until I opened one email, from a very established, and exceptionally talented photographer. This email immediately looked different because it actually had some depth to it; more than just a paragraph or two. This email was offering me the chance to come to a wedding in a few weeks time as a third photographer. It would give me the opportunity to experience a wedding as a photographer, to shadow an experienced photographer, and to build a portfolio. I was unbelievably excited, and that was before I even knew where this wedding would be taking place.

That’s when I was told that it would be at Euridge Manor!

If you don’t know where that is, just google it, you’ll understand. To get married there is an unbelievable experience, it has everything you could want and more; it is custom built as an ‘everything you would ever need’ type of venue. It’s the sort of venue where photographers pay to do a shoot there, so they have it in their portfolio. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was; I still can’t. I will have to do a separate blog on that.

I feel very honoured that I was given that opportunity. That photographer, by the way, was Laura Martha, her website is www.lauramarthaphotography.com please go and have a look, she is fantastic.

My next step shortly after this was to shoot at my brother’s wedding, which was a completely different experience. I had offered to photograph the wedding as a wedding gift, which just so happened to give me an opportunity for more experience and more portfolio pictures. However, I was also a guest at this wedding, along with my wife and two children. Mixed with the fact that there were family members there that I hadn’t seen for years and obviously wanted to spend some time with, this became a really difficult wedding day to photograph. I think I handled it pretty well, and I am happy with the images that I produced, but it’s fair to say that I slept well that night!

Euridge Manor

Taken on Kodak Portra 400 with a Leica M6

Let’s talk about grain

What is the first thing you see when you look at an image taken on film? Hopefully, it’s the amazing subject, or the vibrant colour, or the beautiful contrast. Or maybe it is the characteristics of the film stock.

Quite likely though, it will be the grain.

Taken on Kodak Portra 400 with a Pentax K2

As more and more developments are made with digital photography, modern day digital cameras are getting better at keeping a ‘clean’ image at higher ISO. That is, they look ‘less grainy’ at higher sensitivity levels. There is a big difference though, between the grain of analogue film, and the ‘grain’ of a digital image.

Digital ‘grain’ is actually what we call noise, and it is completely undesirable. Digital noise is made up of random imperfections in the image, usually shown as small black and white (Luminance noise), or colour dots (Colour noise). There are different reasons why you get this, and though they usually happen in low light situations, can still appear anytime. This can be extremely distracting and can ruin what would have been a great image.

Taken on Fomapan 400 with a Pentax K2

There are many options to try and reduce this effect, either with the settings used to take the image in the first place, or with de-noise software afterwards, and although these have become better and better, it still usually changes the image in some other way.

Now, analogue grain is completely different; in very basic terms, the emulsion on a film negative contains silver crystals. These crystals are light sensitive and turn into pure metallic silver when exposed to light. The grain on a film negative, is exactly what creates the image; without the grain, there would be no image.

Depending on the ISO (speed), and type of film, the crystals will either be bigger or smaller. A higher ISO film will have generally bigger crystals than a lower ISO film. And it’s much the same with black and white compared to colour. Also, the structure and shape of the grain can be different across various film stocks.

Analogue is very linear, and there is a lot more scope around a ‘correct’ exposure compared to digital. The level of grain will vary depending on the previously mentioned items, as well as the exposure (among other things), but it is a lot more organic, and therefore a lot more pleasing to the eye. Digital, however, is generally non-linear. It tends to be ‘off or on’ and ‘right or wrong’. If the exposure isn’t right it will not look at all pleasing to the eye (I am generalising, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and rules are made to be broken). Modern cameras have the ability to automatically correct poor exposure, and the power of post image processing is continually improving, making it a lot easier to avoid or correct noise in a digital image. This is not usually necessary in an analogue image. You can spend more time focussed on the image itself rather than thinking about what you are going to ‘fix’ later.

Taken on Kodak Portra 400 with a Leica M6

The biggest thing when it comes to grain, is that we are continually pushing high definition. New TV’s, new computers, new cameras, we are constantly improving the fidelity of everything. If we can’t see the nose hairs of the person on screen, we feel that we are looking at a low quality image. Someone recently showed me a picture that was taken at a wedding, and he was genuinely impressed that you could see makeup smeared on the shoulder of one of the guests’ suit!

I believe there is a time and a place for both analogue and digital, and both are beautiful in their own ways. Ultimately, photography is art, and you should find whatever it is you love in each image.

Why do I shoot film?

All or nothing! That’s me. My photography journey started around 9 years ago when I fell down the rabbit hole of ‘how to be a better photographer’, prior to that I had no interest at all, nothing. I had never owned a stand alone camera, I just used the one on my phone if I needed to, or let everyone else take the photos. I just had no passion for it.

It was the middle of 2014 when my whole life was about to change forever. My wife and I found out we were pregnant with our first child and, like most people, we had no idea what to do. We started to research online and invest in books, giving us ideas and inspiration on ‘what to do when your little one arrives’.

There was generally some good advice in there, but we came across a golden nugget that would completely change my path. The advice was to ‘invest in a decent digital camera and learn to use it before your child is born so you can document them as they grow up’. We thought this was a great idea, so we went out to see what was available in a sensible price range and came home with a Nikon D3200 with two lenses (I can’t remember what they were, but they worked for us).

As soon as I got the camera out of the box I was obsessed. There was something about it that just made me want to take pictures. I set it to manual mode (as I said, I’m all or nothing) and started learning how to use it. I was taking pictures of everything, and when I wasn’t taking pictures I was reading articles online or watching videos teaching me the exposure triangle, the rule of thirds, leading lines, and all the other rules of photography,

For a couple of years I continued to take pictures of everything I could. The camera went with me everywhere, and I started to increase my kit bag with new lenses, flashes, and filters. Fairly soon though I realised I don’t like scrolling through menus to change settings, and I found the D3200 to be too small for my hands. I traded it in for a much older but more professional D300. This camera was well used but was bigger and had ergonomically placed controls for all the main settings that I would use. I absolutely loved this camera, but with it came my sudden and unexpected loss of love for digital photography.

In my research about all things photography, I had already come across some articles about analogue (film) photography making a return and found myself to be intrigued. There was a cult following of film photographers, and I loved the idea of the community. At the same time I hit a heavy wall with digital. I found I was just taking pictures of anything, knowing that I could edit and manipulate the images later in photoshop, making everything vibrant and sharp, but ultimately, to me, the image was boring. It had nothing. No soul, no character, no real subject. People were commenting on how good the images looked, but I knew it was just the vibrancy of the colours that was doing it.

I had always looked in the second hand section of local camera shops to see if there were any bargains (that was where I found my trusty D300 after all), and I had started to see more and more vintage analogue cameras. In one shop that I went into, there were three cameras that caught my eye. There was an old Leica, and Olympus OM1, and a Pentax K2. All three were similar prices, and originally I went for the Olympus, but when I tried it out it didn’t quite feel right. The Leica was too old for me at the time (probably worth a lot more money now though!) so I tried out the Pentax. I was surprised by the weight of it; it felt solid and comfortably heavy. There was dust in the viewfinder, and it felt old (it was from the mid 70’s), but it seemed to work absolutely fine. It also came with a 50mm f1.4 lens, which completely sold it for me. I bought it as a Christmas present for myself, so put it away until then.

Vevey, Switzerland. One of my first analogue pictures; taken with my Pentax K2 using Kodak Ektar 100 film.

When I finally got to put the first roll of film in it (some Kodak Colorplus) I was excited and terrified at the same time. What if it didn’t work? What if I wasn’t a good enough photographer to get good images out of it? Was it going to be an expensive waste of time? It did slow me down though. It taught me to take my time and think about what I was going to shoot before I tried to shoot it. It gave me a completely different view on photography,

When I finished the roll, I sent it away to be developed and waited anxiously for over a week for them to come back. When the link to my digital files finally arrived I had huge butterflies in my stomach. Luckily, most of my images turned out a lot better than I had expected, I won’t say they were great as I still had so much learning to do but I realised at that point that all I was interested in was film. I loved the look of them, I loved the feel of them, and I loved the sense of achievement that they gave me. I had a holiday to Switzerland coming up, the Pentax was coming with me.

I took a couple of rolls of film with me and all I wanted to do was to be out and about, taking pictures. The scenery was amazing, and it felt so good to be capturing it on 35mm film. I burned through a couple of rolls in a few days and couldn’t wait for them to be developed. This time I was a lot happier with more of my pictures, it felt like I was starting to really get to grips with it, and it made me a lot more sensitive to what I had done wrong. With digital, you can take a picture on the settings you think are right and then have a look at the screen, if you aren’t happy with the results you can adjust and take the picture again, and repeat until you have an image you are happy with. With film you don’t have that luxury, and by the time the roll is finished and developed it is very likely you would have completely forgotten what settings the camera was on when you took the picture. You can take field notes, I tried to do this for the first couple of rolls using the notes app on my phone, but something went wrong and the notes went out of sync, I didn’t bother after that!

Rochers de Naye, Switzerland. Taken on my second visit to Switzerland with my Pentax K2 on Fuji C200.

In the five years since, I have felt myself become a better photographer, Obviously this is subjective, photography is art, and beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder, but I had a much better understanding of ‘how’ it all worked. I have nothing against digital, and I believe that image editing is very much an art form in itself, it’s just not an art form that I enjoy. I love thinking about what I want to shoot, and then calculating what I need to do to create the image that I have in my head. I am however, very much into the beauty of ‘real’. For me, the soul of the image is in the subject, and the way the image is put together. Grain doesn’t bother me, neither do the images where someone isn’t looking or something is happening in the background. I will look at what I am getting a picture of, so there shouldn’t be a bin in the background, or a lamppost in the way, therefore I don’t need to use editing software to remove these things.

I love the challenge, and I do like to be a bit different, but I’m certainly not here to change the world. I love to talk about film photography, and I’m always happy to answer questions that people have about it. Being a wedding photographer that shoots only on film is certainly not an easy route to take, but I do it because I love it, hopefully that shows through in my pictures.

This isn’t a job to me, it’s a passion.

Montreux, Switzerland. This image was also taken on my second trip to Switzerland. Again, taken on my trusty Pentax K2 on Fuji C200.