On Film Photography - Part 1

About a 9-minute read

As someone who shot weddings exclusively on film for 10 years, and also worked in the commercial photography world when everything was film, I can say that much of what’s marketed today as “vintage film” often has a toy camera or point-and-shoot aesthetic. It doesn’t resemble what a professional would have shot on film 30 or 40 years ago.

The "film look" people crave today is largely fabricated. If you want to see what film photography was really like, pick up a magazine or catalog from the ’70s, ’80s, or ’90s. Go to a museum where prints from those eras are displayed. That will show you what professional photographers (and artists) were actually doing.

Today there’s a nostalgia for something that wasn’t really there in the professional world. It’s more of a nostalgia for the non-professional photography of the time: family vacation albums, the photos your grandmother took with a Kodak Instamatic, fading color prints from 30 or 40 years ago, copies of copies, and poorly scanned negatives from mediocre scanners.

A Brief of History Wedding Photography.

Up until around the year 2000, wedding photographers generally weren't seen as “artists” or “photojournalists.” Most photographers who earned a BFA in photography were looking toward commercial photography, photojournalism, or fine art. That was where the professional opportunities and, generally, the money were. Wedding photography was not considered a particularly desirable career for a photographer.

What was profitable was the traditional wedding photography studio model. A studio might have six, twelve, or sometimes even more photographers working for it. The photographers were typically paid a day rate that was only a little more than minimum wage. They were essentially work-for-hire photographers. They didn't own the photographs they took, and neither did the clients. The studio owned the negatives.

These studios were businesses first. Much of their profit came from selling prints and albums after the wedding. There were no JPGs, online galleries, or digital files. After the wedding, the client would receive a set of 4x6 prints as proofs. If you wanted to share a photograph with someone, you had to order additional prints from the studio.

If you wanted a photograph for your thank-you cards, for example, you had to order as many prints as you needed for the cards. If you wanted twenty-five thank-you cards, you ordered twenty-five photographs. The studio kept the negatives, so there was no way to simply make another copy yourself. Every additional print was another sale for the studio.

For most people, that was simply how photography worked. The only way for someone else to see your photograph was for you to make a physical copy and give or mail it to them.

Wedding photography itself was generally more technical than artistic. The studio wanted photographs that were properly exposed, in focus, and suitable for reproduction. Photographers were taught specific "posing techniques." They would use flash, often shooting around f/8 at the reception, and the goal was to make sure every photograph was properly lit and technically sound. It was an assembly line of sorts.

Many of these studios were located right on Main Street. When it was time for your wedding, you walked into the local studio, and there was a good chance the owner already knew you. They might have photographed your family portraits or your school pictures. It was essentially a step up from going to JCPenney or Sears for a portrait.

There were certainly exceptions. A small number of high-end and celebrity photographers produced beautiful, sophisticated wedding photography. But for much of the 20th century, wedding photography was considered relatively low-brow within the professional photography world. That began to change in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The Wedding Photography Revolution.

I was there when the wedding photography revolution happened. At the time, I was working in commercial photography when I was introduced to wedding photography by a commercial photographer who had the foresight to see what was coming. He understood that within a few years, editorial photography was going to change dramatically, and that the traditional career paths for photographers were beginning to disappear.

He recruited me, along with several other photographers who were working in editorial, fashion, and advertising, and brought us into his boutique, high-end Manhattan wedding photography studio. The idea was to offer something completely different.

Instead of traditional wedding photographers, the studio employed photographers with backgrounds in editorial, fashion, advertising, and commercial photography. We approached weddings the way we approached other assignments. We were interested in composition, light, storytelling, moments, and creating photographs that looked and felt different from traditional wedding photography. And the studio took off.

Eventually, we were photographing more than 200 weddings a year. During that period, I was shooting around 40 weddings a year myself. We all continued doing commercial photography during the week and shot weddings on weekends.

At first, we were one of only a handful of studios doing this kind of wedding photography, even in New York City. But the industry was changing rapidly. As newspapers and magazines began to decline, photographers with degrees in photography started looking for other ways to make a living. Even established commercial photographers began looking at weddings as a viable source of income. And as more of these photographers entered the wedding industry, the photography itself began to change.

By the mid-2000s, wedding photography increasingly looked like photojournalism, fashion photography, editorial photography, or even advertising photography. Weddings were no longer simply about (just) making sure everyone was properly exposed and in focus. Photographers were bringing their own visual language and aesthetic to the job. And clients began to expect something different, too.

The studio I was working for was also unusual in another way. The owner loved black-and-white film. He had been working with it and making amazing prints since the 1970s. He was, and still is, a master printer. The studio had a black-and-white darkroom, and he printed all of the black-and-white photographs by hand. And they were beautiful.

We were shooting everything on film, and one of the great advantages was that clients could receive genuinely beautiful, museum-quality black-and-white prints. For roughly ten years, that was the way we worked.

Then digital photography started to take over. Clients increasingly wanted digital files instead of film and proof prints. It was very similar to what happened to the music industry with CDs and, eventually, digital music. People stopped wanting physical products. They wanted files they could download, share, store, and keep. The economics of photography changed along with the technology. The old studio model, where the photographer shot the wedding, the studio kept the negatives, and the studio made money selling prints and albums, was becoming obsolete. By around 2010, delivering digital files had become the norm. For wedding photographers, there really wasn't much choice. It was transition or die.

Eventually, Everything Became Digital.

By around 2015, digital was king. Digital cameras could do everything film could do, and in many ways, they could do it better. Many camera manufacturers had stopped making film cameras, and many film stocks were discontinued or became harder to find. Professional film cameras that had once cost $1,200 or more could suddenly be found for $150. The market for film had essentially collapsed.

Today, film is making a comeback. A generation that never experienced photography when film was the only option wants to experience that process. Social media influencers have also helped turn film into a lifestyle and aesthetic. As a result, vintage film cameras, particularly point-and-shoot cameras that make it easy for anyone to shoot film, are now being sold for surprisingly high prices.

Part of the appeal is the experience itself: shooting a photograph, not immediately seeing it, and then waiting to see what you captured. For people who grew up with digital cameras and smartphones, that slower, more deliberate process feels completely new.

How I Got Into Photography in the First Place.

I went to college for art because I loved graphics and printed matter: magazines, album covers, posters, and books. Studying art history and photography history changed the way I saw the world and photography.

After college, I worked as an assistant to high-profile photographers in New York City on shoots for magazines such as Elle and Vogue, as well as major advertising campaigns. I loaded cameras, set up lighting, handed photographers fresh camera bodies as they worked, and documented rolls of film. I kept detailed notes on how each frame was exposed and compared those notes with the results once the film was developed.

I eventually oversaw thousands of rolls of film from exposure through the final image, working with everything from 35mm and 120 to 4x5 and 8x10. That experience became invaluable when I went on to shoot my own assignments and, later, weddings.

I say all this because I want to make it clear that I lived, breathed, and sweated film photography for more than 10 years.

Today, I shoot mostly digital, especially for weddings and events, because I believe virtually everything I can achieve with film can be done just as well, and often better, with digital. Digital is also more reliable. My cameras record each photograph to two memory cards, creating an immediate backup of every image. Digital cameras perform better in low light and give me much more flexibility through RAW files, autofocus, metering, and other forms of automation. That flexibility allows me to work faster and is especially important to my candid, photojournalistic style.

Film Has It's Purpose.

To me, film is simply another professional photographic medium. My goal is the same whether I'm shooting digitally or on film: well-composed, properly exposed photographs with the same attention to light, composition, and storytelling.

When I shoot film, I do it because I want to create a negative. Even when I create high-resolution scans for viewing and presentation, the original negatives are preserved. That gives me the option of creating handcrafted prints directly from those negatives, either shortly after the wedding or years later.

For me, that's the true value of film. Every exposure creates an original photographic negative that exists independently of a digital file and can be archived for years or even decades.

My Film Work.

You can see my film images throughout this page. The cover photographs on my blog posts, as well as the square photographs on the FAQ and pricing pages, were all shot on 120 film.

For clients who want film, I offer the option of adding film photography to your wedding day. I don't simply shoot a few rolls of 35mm film, have them scanned, and hand you digital files. I work with a highly skilled and trusted professional lab to have the film properly developed, and then create high-resolution scans for your online gallery, making the photographs easy to view, share, and print.

More importantly, you will have permanent access to the original negatives. The negatives are the reason I shoot film in the first place. They are original photographic records that can be preserved and, at any point in the future, used to create hand-printed darkroom enlargements. Unlike a digital file, the negative exists independently of the scan and gives you the option of creating a true photographic print years or even decades from now.

If you're interested in adding film photography to your wedding, or simply have a question or two, reach out to me. Let's talk more about it.

Before you go, I want to encourage you to look at the works of some legendary photographers who shot on film, such as Man Ray, Weegee, Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark, Nan Goldin, Robert Frank, Vivian Maier, Sebastião Salgado, Eli Reed, Anton Corbijn, and Robert Watson. To me, that's what film looks like.

If you're wondering why so many photographers shot in black and white... one reason is that black-and-white film and prints were silver-based and didn’t fade, meaning they could last forever. Color photos, on the other hand, typically had a lifespan of about 10 years before they started fading or shifting colors.

If you're curious about photography, Magnum Photos (magnumphotos.com) and the International Center of Photography (icp.org) showcase incredible work from some of the world's most renowned photographers. These platforms offer not only inspiring imagery but also valuable insights into composition, storytelling, and the history of photography.

On Film Photography - Part 2

About a 8-minute read

Taking a deeper dive.

I understand that there is a trend right now toward things that feel less polished, especially after years of digital photography making everything cleaner and more perfect.

Interestingly, this is one of the reasons that, even after working for major commercial photographers who produced highly polished images for advertising campaigns and catalogs, I always pushed my own work toward a more natural look. My photojournalism training influenced me heavily. I didn't want photographs to feel overly posed or staged, and I didn't want lighting that looked obviously artificial or commercial. When I used lighting, I wanted it to look natural. The result was photography that didn't necessarily follow the latest trend. It looked real, natural, and, hopefully, timeless.

I approached photography this way when I shot musicians on film, and I approached weddings the same way when I was shooting exclusively on film.

Don't get me wrong. The idea of embracing flaws and imperfections isn't foreign to me. Before photography, I thought I was going to go into graphic design. I was heavily involved in the punk-rock scene, making flyers for bands, designing demo-tape and album covers, producing zines, and doing a lot of cut-and-paste work with Xerox machines. So I understand the appeal of imperfection and the handmade aesthetic.

What I think gets misunderstood today, particularly by people who discovered photography after digital cameras became the norm, is the idea that film itself was inherently flawed or that photographers shot film without knowing what they were going to get. That simply wasn't how professional (or even amateur) photography worked.

Plenty of serious amateurs understood their cameras, understood film, understood exposure, and produced excellent photographs. Many shot slide film, which had much less exposure latitude than negative film and required you to get the exposure right the first time.

Think about the dads with a carousels full of slides. They knew their cameras and knew how to use them. They would set up the slide projector, pull down the silver screen, and show the family hundreds of photographs from their summer vacation.

Being a photographer (even an amateur photographer) meant you knew how to work a camera, and that you had mastered film.

'Today everyone is a photographer"

In the past 10 or 15 years, digital cameras and especially phone cameras have made it possible for almost anyone to produce a technically good photograph without necessarily understanding how they achieved it. And that's a good thing. Technology has made photography incredibly accessible. But I think this is where some of the confusion about film comes from.

Someone who has spent years shooting digital cameras (or phones) may shoot film for the first time and conclude that film is unpredictable. If you know your camera and you know your film, film is not unpredictable.

Vintage Cameras

Another thing I see today is people buying vintage cameras from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. These cameras can be wonderful, but remember that they are now 30, 40, 50, or even 60 years old. Yes, they can be unpredictable, just like a 50-year-old car.

Gears can wear out. Light seals can deteriorate. Lubricants can dry out. Shutters can become inaccurate. Mold can develop inside lenses. A camera that hasn't been properly maintained may produce inconsistent results.

Professional photographers understood this, too. We had our cameras serviced regularly, often every year or two. Technicians checked the light seals, inspected for mold, lubricated and adjusted mechanical components, and made sure the cameras were operating properly.

Cameras used professionally had to be reliable and predictable. They weren't supposed to be machines that produced random images.

Expired Film

Professional photographers didn't buy their film at the drugstore or supermarket. We bought it from professional camera shops, where film was properly stored from the manufacturer through the distributor and into the store, at the correct temperature and under the proper conditions.

That mattered. Properly stored film was predictable. You knew how it would respond, what its tones would look like, and what kind of color balance to expect. When you bought professional film, you knew what you were going to get.

Even if it had been properly refrigerated, we generally threw away expired film. You simply didn't want to introduce an unknown variable into the process.

Fine Art and Experimentation

Yes, there were plenty of fine-art photographers in the ’80s and ’90s who experimented with alternative film processes. Joel-Peter Witkin, for example, did work that involved physically manipulating and scratching film.

Commercial photographers experimented, too. In the entertainment industry, particularly with album covers, music magazines, and movie posters, we might cross-process film to create unusual color shifts or changes in saturation.

But none of this was about producing random or unpredictable results.

As professionals, we had to deliver work to clients. As artists, when working on personal projects, we still had an intention and a vision. Experimentation doesn't mean surrendering control.

As a photographer trained in art school, and then trained by professional photographers through an apprenticeship, I learned that photography is a craft. Part of that craft is understanding how to get the result you want. Professionals get hired because you've done something thousands of times, and their client knows they can deliver it.

Even fine artists working in galleries and museums have to create bodies of work connected to a vision and trajectory. Their work isn't simply random accidents or uncontrolled experimentation. There is intention behind it.

Apprenticeships

One thing I see missing today is the apprenticeship. A lot of people seem to jump into photography by teaching themselves or watching YouTube videos. In some ways, that's refreshing. There has never been more information available to someone who wants to learn. But there is tremendous value in understanding the history of the medium and learning from people who came before you.

When you don't look back at what has already been done, it's easy to create something you think is groundbreaking when someone else explored the same idea decades ago. You can spend years struggling to solve a problem that someone before you already figured out.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

The danger of skipping that history and training is that you may reach the next level without understanding what you're standing on. You can climb the ladder, but if you don't know what came before, you may reach the next level without the foundation needed to do something truly new.

Honestly, when I see a lot of what is being sold as “film photography” today, I sometimes think, Oh, that's a lot of the same mistakes I was making when I was first exploring photography in high school, before I took a photography class and learned how to properly use my camera, properly expose film, and properly handle the film both before and after shooting.

As always, if you have any questions or would like to discuss any aspect this further, feel free to reach out to me.

A Little Easter Egg



If you made it all the way through this article, congratulations. You clearly have more patience than most people! As a little reward, the next time you see me, mention that you read this article, and I'll make a portrait of you. My treat. Consider it my thank-you for making it all the way to the end.