Shot four years ago

Over the last few years I’ve been shooting a lot of film. I like the results I get. Within a set, the images have a consistency and cohesiveness. I’m especially proud of:

• Hydra - Shot on 35mm Portra 160.
• Western Landscapes - Shot on a 6x9 camera with Portra 400.
• Southern Mountains - Shot on a Hasselblad with HP5+ at 400.

Those photographs have only minor edits in post. Film, depending on the type you use, adds an opinionated splash of paint across the image. Digital RAW files are sterile and must be manipulated in order to turn out anything half decent. Which one can do, there’s so much captured in a RAW file that you can meaningfully change colours, recover details from shadows, and reconstruct portions of the image. This is great if you know what you want to create – using the tool to create a positive image. Me four years ago – I was using the tool to try and make my images not look washed out and crap.

Shooting Portra 160 on 35mm film and Portra 400 on 120 film have helped clarify the style of colour landscape images that I want to create. Pictured here are some digital photographs I shot four years ago, edited to the style I like today. Breaking down a simple ‘I like how this photo looks’ into the characteristics and factors that make me like it has helped my photography. It acts as a positive force in selecting a composition for a given landscape. Some of these characteristics are:

Grain – I like to compose large skies in my landscapes. Shooting blue skies on digital results in a solid block of colour, like someone took the paint can tool in an image processing program and dropped in a perfect gradient of blue. By adding a small amount of grain it breaks up the synthetic blob and adds texture.

Great detail, low sharpening – Landscapes need detail. I want to be able to zoom in and explore the scene. High megapixel digital cameras give you detail, but also give a very sharp image. Sharpening can be increased or decreased in post production. The result I’m after is a ‘400 speed film on medium format’ sort of look. This can be achieved straight out of camera by adapting film-era lenses onto digital cameras. Old primes are good, though use a lens hood as the coatings can add flare (or don’t, if you like flare). I avoid old zoom lenses they can look scrappy and vignette towards the edges.

Muted colours over loud colours. I prefer the more neutral results of Portra film over the more colour saturated Ektar film. Though, this is the biggest ‘it depends’ one of them all. I made the image above closer to my view of Ektar colours, while the other three in this post are closer to Portra colours.

Applying my now-realised style to photographs that I shot years ago has been another learning and improvement loop for my photography. I can see what I was trying to do (often with not much conscious thought behind it), and evaluate how I’d approach the same scenario today. I experiment with different crops and aspect ratios that I’ve learned over the years with my current favourite being 5x4. Best of all, going through my old photographs has made me want to go back to those locations and shoot them again.