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Pricing

Film

I shoot exclusively on film, and primiarily for prints. As a safety precaution, I can bring on a second shooter to capture digital photos if the budget permits.

Why do this? Simple: film is but better. Cleaner, smoother images, more of an organic “living” feel, it improves my process for creating the art, certain film formats (in particular large format) offer resolutions and image quality that digital cameras still cannot beat, and the colors and tonality that good professional film provides cannot be replicated by digital cameras.

In addition to all of that, I’m madly in love with the developing and printing process. I personally handle all developing and printing, and all of my prints are custom made in a darkroom. In some ways, seeing the film develop is the most rewarding part of the process, and it’s one that you get to share in–via contact sheet delivery.

Signs You Might Like Film

• You’re interested in having your photos made into prints for safekeeping and legacy, instead of just wanting stuff to share on socials.
• You like the idea of having BIG prints, ones that you can hang up on your wall and that visitors to your house can spend hours inspecting up close and finding new details.
• You like art, and care about making sure your photos are aesthetically pleasing, not just documentary.
• You like history, and want photos (and negatives) that last.
• You’re ok with waiting for photos, assuming the photos are worth the wait. You’ll sit longer for a better product.
• You like the idea of the first time you see your photos being when you get contact sheets of them in the mail.

The Basics

Film Types & Options

Black & White Negative: Creates standard inverted black and white images, used for making prints and scans. Can’t be projected.

Color Negative: Creates standard inverted color images, also used for making prints and scans, though it’s a more formulaic process, with less room for artistic creativity than BW printing. Also cannot be projected.

Slide Film (aka “Color Positive” or “Color Reversal”): Used for creating slides which you can then project with specific analog projectors. Also very fine-grained and high quality, and still very scannable. Working with sliMuch more of an intensive (and expensive) process, but very rewarding if you like slideshows.

Experimental & Expired Film Photography: The sky is really the limit, especially when it comes to strange color films. Expired film provides a specific aesthetic that’s hard to replicate, and there are plenty of other ways to tactically fog or soup or do other things to film photos that digital can’t match. That said, there’s also always a risk, not just that something goes wrong, but that 2 decades later you look back and wish you’d used more normal options. Think carefully before committing to this, we can provide samples and references to help.

All of these options, as well as combinations of them, are available.

Camera Types & Options

35mm or “135”: The smallest format I shoot, gives beautiful images when printed to 4x6 or 8x10 sizes, but often struggles to hold up on larger frames. That said, it’s very effective and very efficient: with a little under 40 shots per roll, it’s going to be far and away the cheapest option for film photography, and it still comes with all of the benefits of shooting film.

Medium Format or “120”: The real “professional” format. Beautiful images, amazing resolution, simultaneously sharp and smooth. But at anywhere from 4 (for panoramas) to 15 shots per roll, it’s 2-3x as expensive as 135.

Large Format (4x5): Large format uses single sheets of film to capture images instead of rolls, in our case sheets that are 4 inches by 5 inches. These sheets are loaded into an old school box camera (think civil war era, or early 1920s papparazzi cameras with the guy with the flashbulb and the shutter cable and the blanket over his head) and the resulting image, because it’s put onto such a massive sheet of film, is massively detailed. Really, these provide unmatched resolution and a unique look because of the nature of the camera they’re shot on, and they are great for group photos, portraits, and landscapes because of this. These are the kinds of photos that you make into tapestry-size prints. You could take a group photo with a 4x5 camera and a clean lens and have no trouble picking out individual eyelashes in the final print.

The main cost of this is that individual shots often take 5-20 minutes to set up. When we shoot large format at a wedding, we usually only do it for the big group photos and other preplanned setups, and shoot the rest on 120 or 135.