Particles & LIGHt
Adding Film to Your Wedding Day
Film brings something rare and reverent to a wedding day. It slows time. It shifts the frame from polished to poetic. The grain, the tones, the way light haloes around a shoulder or spills across a cheek – it’s less about precision and more about presence. When woven into a digital gallery, it feels like a handwritten note slipped inside a book. It’s memory, made richer. Particles and light, and everything that matters.
Since Feeling is FIrst
Shooting film is innately slow and limited, polar opposite to the notion that a wedding day is a rapid-fire checklist to be completed. Film requires a careful consideration of light and framing. You can shoot quickly with film but that also lends itself to an in the moment feeling. The moment is interpreted and tucked away rather than fussed over.
WHY I SHOOT FILM ON A WEDDING DAY
I began as a film photographer, learning to process film by hand in a high school dark room and then shooting everything from toy cameras to 8×10 studio cameras in college. What I’ve always loved about film is the way it responds to light; soft and glowy, deep and grainy. Film images have an innate romantic quality, as if distilled from a movie. The unpredictable quirks of old cameras and even shifts in processing chemicals create perfectly imperfect photographs.
While I shoot the bulk of a wedding day digitally, shooting film shaped the way I see weddings. I approach each celebration without needless hurry. I typically shoot digital in tandem with film, ensuring there is a guaranteed capture of a moment as well as a softer, more freeform complement. Mixing film and digital mediums provides flexibility and encourages thoughtfulness.
35mm FILM FAVORITES
