Now, before you ask, YES, people do still shoot film.
When we bring our film gear to shoots, guests and couples are fairly surprised that film is still sold let alone shot. For those of you unfamiliar with the trend, it hasn't really gone away and has seen such a huge surge in wedding photographers, thanks to film photographer legends like Jose Villa, KT Merry, and Elizabeth Messina. If you haven't heard their names directly, I can guarantee that if you're pinning to a wedding Pinterest board, you have at least one of those artists in there.
Modern film stocks, when shot correctly, have a light, airy quality without loosing details in the light and dark areas. Digital has a tendency to blow out highlights, loosing details like lace in a wedding gown. The most popular film stocks (brands of film) are the Fuji 400H and Kodak Portra 400. I know there are dozens more, including B&W films, but for now, I'll just touch on the basic ones.
We have a few reasons why we are integrating more film into our work-
One// We love the way it looks. It just looks, well, dreamy. It's grainy, light goodness is hard to replicate in digital. We have a fabulous workflow that allows us to color our digital to match the film we shoot, but there is something so beautiful about the fallout (bokeh) and charm of a film photograph.



Kirk Mastin & Jonathan Canlas both have informative q&a sections on their websites and blogs, and when you send in your film, ask your lab to help you by critiquing it. They want to help you improve and grow as an artist. Jose Villa, Elizabeth Messina, and Jen Huang have gorgeous printed books that you can drool over, highlight, and dog-ear.



Hopefully this blog post helps both photographers and brides understand why we shoot film, and why others are following suite. It is a beautiful medium and with combing it with our digital workflow, is the perfect way to capture wedding day memories.