I’ve been on this new journey in my business with incorporating film with my digital work. It’s something that I fell in love with last summer; the basics of it. My husband bought me a Canon AE-1 and a few rolls of Fuji400H film and I loaded the film and started shooting.
The AE-1 is a completely manual camera; winding the film, re-winding the film, focusing the lens, setting the aperture, rating the ISO, etc – it is literally all done manually. It was so refreshing for me to get back to the basics of photography and really hone in on my technical skills.
With digital, I aim to get the image right in camera. If that doesn’t happen, I can almost always save it in editing. Film is different; it’s still flexible, but in different ways. I am learning so much on my journey to learn and utilize film. So I wanted to share some of my latest scans from a front yard session my sister and I had at my parents house. Jenay dressed up for her birthday and asked if I’d take an iPhone photo or two, and I told her I loaded the film camera with some Fuji400h and we had 36 shots.
While I love them all, here are just a few of my favorites from our film portraits session in our parents front and back yard!
I absolutely adore the grain in film and how it adds dimension and depth to the photos.
Dad has some pretty cool neon signs in their backyard, so of course we had to take advantage of that. The neon sign film portraits are some of my favs!
I love her smile in that last film portrait. It’s beautiful! The sunset adds the perfect hues to her skin tone and the colors of her outfit pop and add some much to the image.
Those last two and this next film portrait show off her quirky side! You’d never guess her fiance was making fun of us for taking photos. Just call me her #InstagramHusband for life – she’s lucky her sister is a photographer!
Thanks as always to my gorgeous sister for being my forever model! It’s fun to get creative with friends. And a super special thanks to my amazing film lab, PhotoVision. I couldn’t imagine going through this film journey with anyone else. They are insightful, supporting and have been such a valuable resource for me as I navigate incorporating film into my wedding and portrait photography business.
Follow along on my film portraits journey on my Instagram @megghelm
