snow . mini style shoot

If you have been following lately, you know that I have dove in head first in love with film. I have been a voyeur of it for years now and finally took the plunge and gave it a whirl. The learning process has been challenging. Being a digital photographer made my life easier than it should have been and I took on the skill as a “feel photographer”. The camera and I understood each other and we produced the work that I wanted to produce.

So then comes film…sold as easy…shoot…send it off…done!! YEAH RIGHT!!! Not quite that simple. Learning the stocks, the millions of ways of metering (learning light meters on top of that) and then dealing with who does your developing and scanning. I literally opened a can of worms. I feel like have taken everything I have learned over the last 6 years and threw them out the door and started from scratch. Just like the beginning of my digital trials, there are high days and very low days. Days I think that I am INSANE for doing this just when my digital world has become much simpler. Why am I complicating things? Why fuss with something that is pretty darn good?

I fell in love. There is a romance with film that is impossible to explain unless you are a film photographer. The process, the sounds of the shutter and winding of film, the allure of the depth in the images that digital has yet to perfect, the patience and pace it takes to shoot it,  and the nostalgia of a purer form of the photographic system. It has grabbed me in a way that even on those low days, I just want to pick up the camera and shoot a roll…and I do…and my Walgreen’s guy is very annoyed with that.

I am new…very new. Daily I read techniques on metering, study the practices of the masters around me so I can absorb any tips, tricks and skills possible, analyze film stocks, and drool over countless vintage film cameras on Ebay. This love affair is taking time…and there are days I get very frustrated with it and find myself in a place of jealousy and impatience, but I plug along and remind myself that less than 6 months ago, I was just trying to figure out how to load the film in my camera. So, I keep shooting, testing, and growing my knowledge and comfortability with my gear and film stocks. It is getting easier…the results are starting to become more and more consistent and before long it will be my film babies that I grab instead of my digital.

Then comes the snow.

This shoot was not supposed to look like this. She got dressed up for a sunny ever green and red flannel winter shoot. We headed out the door, sun to the left, blizzard snow conditions whipping in from the right (craziest weather thing I have seen in YEARS), so I canceled the shoot and told her to get back in her comfy warm PJ’s. Within 15 minutes we had almost an inch on the ground, the wind settled and the snow flakes got large and fluffy. I told her to throw her clothes back on and we headed out. Man, she is a trooper. It was super cold, my hands were nearly numb within a minute or two…but she was game…and the results are amazing. I got my metering right (in snow none the less…minor accomplishment for me) and she rocked the shoot as always. 10 minutes of shooting time and images we will love forever.

I puffy heart film…and I puffy heart my Bean for letting me abuse her talent and willingness to let me photographer her.