Why do you shoot film, Kristina?
I started with film only about a half year ago and I am so in love from the first roll. Well, actually I felt in love with film colors years ago when I even did not know what these colors were from. I spend years trying to edit my photos in order to give them that ”vintage” look, the look only a film camera can produce. I find these soft colors so captivating. Before film, I shoot digital for about 6 years. I can not stop comparing film and digital . Film is so imperfect and so impractical, many things can go wrong, you never know what you will get and then all this waiting. But sometimes a picture can be so good, it makes worth all the waiting and all the imperfections. There is nothing like a good sunlight captured by film and there is no equivalent by any digital. With a digital I can compose a picture, select parameters and capture a moment as it was. With film, additional thing sometimes happen, a little magic. When I look at the picture, it has something more. I shoot film because I expect or I wish this something would appear in every photo. It is a bit of concern those only 36 frames and I was very frightened at the beginning, but it is almost relieve when it comes to photo editing. You can not compare the feeling when you have hundreds of photos to edit and do not know where to start and what to choose; and when you have precious 36 where almost no editing is needed and you happy to see each of the photos.
Of course I still use my dslr, it is very trustable camera, especially when it comes to photo sessions, I can not imagine taking hundreds of photos of running kids with film; that would be too impractical, too much moments would be missed and finally it would get too expensive. But when I create a picture for myself, for seeing beauty, for my art, I would choose film. I would save my best shots for film.
I also love design of most old vintage film cameras. I think they are so elegant, so special; no modern digital camera looks this way, they just look like each other. And what a pleasure to own a thing previously owned and previously loved! I have one camera that comes to me from my family, the camera that had been used by my late father, that I had been taken pictures of as a little girl. Another one I picked up in a thrift store for almost nothing, it works perfectly and I love it. What a pleasure to see that vintage cameras still work as good now as all those years ago. What a pleasure to see look on faces, to tell people that yes, it is indeed very good camera and works very well and yes it can take beautiful pictures.
You can see more of Kristina's film photos on her blog.
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