Couple exposure

If shooting a wedding isn’t enough pressure, try adding film to the mix. Hollie Latham Hucker speaks to two wedding photographers who love capturing the celebrations of a big day with their analogue cameras

- Hollie Latham Hucker

My first assignment for my local paper was shot on film; I came into the newspaper industry in 20062007 in my late teens and at the point of the film/ digital transition. Most local papers were still shooting on film. Since then, I’ve always had a film camera but haven’t always used it frequently.

I picked up a film camera again in 2019 and would seldom shoot personal work on it. After the pandemic I started shooting with a medium format film camera alongside my digital camera at weddings. I wanted a challenge, I wanted to simplify the process. The volume of images people expect now from a wedding still to this day doesn’t make sense to me. Less is more, in my opinion. Pre-digital wedding photographers would often shoot 12, perhaps 24, images at a wedding. The biggest skill as a wedding photographer in my opinion is knowing when not to take a picture.

Things to consider

Nowadays I will always shoot film at a wedding. I will shoot three to four rolls of Kodak Gold 200. Kodak Gold has such a lovely warm tone to it and it’s affordable. Once shot I then use my local lab, Photographique, in Bristol who will develop and deliver a high-res scan. Sometimes I will open an image into Photoshop to remove spots of dust, water marks and then crop if I feel it needs it. But I always keep my editing in line with what’s possible in a darkroom. The most I will do is darken or lighten the image and perhaps add some contrast. But the beauty of shooting film is the timeless look you can capture and colours of the film stock, so I tend not to do much to the image.