End of Year 2012 - Film Photography

If you've been reading my blog in the past year, you'll know that I've been shooting a lot of film lately. Lots of it has been for personal work, but some of it has been for my professional work as well. I've used everything from a medium-format twin lens to toy cameras to Polaroids to a good ol' 35mm (and maybe even a disposable camera here and there). Here are some of my favorite photos I've taken on film in this past year.

Cayla – Denver High School Senior Photography

When Cayla let me know she wanted an all-film senior shoot, I knew I was in for a treat. She's a dancer, so she's very confident and comfortable in front of the camera. We had gorgeous light and an amazing location, so we didn't waste any of it. We spent some time in LoDo and after a few hours came away with what you see here!

Info that photographers will care about:
- Cameras: Polaroid SX-70 and Nikon F100
- Film used: Fuji 400H, Fuji 800Z, Portra 400, Kodak Tri-X 400

Instant Film 11 Years Later

This past weekend, Belinda and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary up in Steamboat Springs. We walked, talked and explored the cute little shops in downtown Steamboat. I always love stopping into old drug stores, so of course we dropped into Lyon's Corner Drug and Soda Fountain to look around. I almost missed it, but when we were on our way out the door I saw it... a vintage photobooth! I couldn't round up $2 in quarters fast enough. We sat down inside, pulled the curtain and, after 4 quick flashes, we waited for our photos to drop out. Here's what we got....

I was thinking about it and it's only appropriate that we got a bit of instant photo gratification on our anniversary. When we got married, we thought it would be fun to put out Polaroid I-Zone cameras at our reception and let guests take photos of themselves and write their thoughts and well-wishes for us to read many years later.  We put out these instructions, along with a bunch of cameras, film, paper and crayons:

Wow, look at that photo... we were so young! Anyway, it was a huge success! We used up all of the film and got so many fun photos and handwritten notes from our guests. Belinda and I were just looking through them and really enjoyed remembering our wedding day and the guests who were a part of it.

Happy Anniversary, Belinda! I hope you know this is a new tradition for our future anniversaries... Polaroid or photobooth fun!

The Polaroid Diaries: Part IV - Tricking Your Camera

Sometimes using the exposure compensation dial on your camera just isn't enough to get a properly exposed Polaroid. In these cases, you have to resort to tricking your camera into thinking it's darker than it actually is. How do you do this? If you can come up with a piece of a neutral density gel, it's really easy! Just cut out a piece that will fit inside of the light sensor on your camera (or tape it over the top) and you're done! I used a 1-stop gel, so now my camera exposes one stop more than it needs to. It doesn't always give me perfect exposures and I find I still need to turn the exposure compensation dial to the "lighten" side, but it sure helps!

Here you can see the gel next to the sensor and then inside of the sensor.

I decided to play around a little over the weekend and take a few photos. I took these photos with the gel in place and the dial all the way to it's lightest setting. I haven't done much to these scans, so the actual photos look better in person. I tried to adjust the last photo to represent what the actual prints look like.

This was taken on expired Polaroid Sepia film.