My Love Affair with Film Photography

All images used in this post were taken on film

Do you remember when you were young and you would go on holiday or on a night out and you would take along the old disposable film camera with you? Can you remember the excitement of dropping it off to be developed? Not always remembering what was on the film or whether any of the images would be any good. That excitement of going back to collect them and finding some great images enclosed in that paper envelope was always like Christmas Morning.
We don't have that anymore.
Everything now is so instant and dispensable. We can see immediately what the images look like. We take 30 photos of the same thing as we have no concern of running out of film. We then favourite the best, post it and there it stays. Online, rarely printed, rarely do we hold them in our hands anymore. The magic of a photography has become diluted with technology and time. Don’t even get me started on the interference of AI! Using film teaches you to slow down, really appreciate what you’re looking at and to think hard about what kind of portrait you are hoping to create. Especially with film being as expensive as it is you do not want to waste a single frame!

I studied film photography during my BTEC in Art & Design course when I was a teenager. It quickly became my favourite lesson of the week. Being able to go into the dark room, swaying the tray with the developer chemicals and your light sensitive paper, eagerly watching the image appear before your eyes beneath the glow of the red light. It was such a fulfilling experience. There is something very romantic about the portraits captured on a negative. Of course the dark room antics of college friends all hiding under the equipment tables and jumping out at one another made the lessons all the more fun.

Now don't get me wrong. I love working with my digital camera, especially on client work. It is very practical. However I missed the simplicity and purity of film photography. So about 8 years ago I bought a Canon AE1 35mm Film Camera on Ebay for £120 and a few rolls of different film stock. My first play around was pretty terrible! I had so many out of focus images and metering the light incorrectly. But that made me love it all the more. There is no editing. I simply take the photograph, send it off to be developed and the film lab sends me my images back. I love everything about the process.

I have definitely improved over the years. Even having two of my film images published on Vogue Italia <3 Proving you do not need fancy equipment to create a beautiful portrait!

Since having my third baby I haven’t found a huge amount of time for this hobby. I have 2 years of used film that I must send off to the lab but other things become a priority when you have 3 kids. I have undeveloped film from Rome, Kefalonia and my youngest daughter as a newborn!

Note to self, and to you, Make time for hobbies,
Come back next month to see if I finally developed the film ;)

Jen