People ask me why I still shoot film. Usually the question carries an assumption — that film is a stylistic choice, a way to achieve a certain aesthetic, a throwback for photographers who want their work to look vintage. That is not why I shoot film.
I shoot film because it changed how I think about every image I make, including the digital ones.
Film taught me to commit.
When you load a roll of Kodak Portra 400 into a Mamiya RB67, you have fifteen frames. Sixteen if you are careful with the wind. That is it. There is no burst mode. There is no chimping the back of the camera after every frame. There is no safety net of shooting two hundred images and finding three good ones in post.
You look. You wait. You decide. Then you press the shutter.
That discipline transferred directly into how I work digitally. I shoot with intention. I do not spray and pray. I make decisions before the shutter fires, not after.
The process is part of the work.
I develop my own film in-house. Black and white and color. I choose the chemistry based on the project, the look I am after, the subject matter. Rodinal at a long stand for character and grain. Different developers for different needs.
Then I scan on an Epson V600 with SilverFast. The negative goes through every step of my hands before it becomes a final image. That level of involvement changes how you see the work.
It is not nostalgia. It is rigor.
Film and digital are not in competition.
I use both. Dual Canon R5 bodies for event and documentary work where I need consistency, speed, and reliability. Mamiya RB67 and 35mm cameras for portrait work, personal projects, and anything where the process itself should be part of the result.
The Blacker The Berry portrait series is shot on medium format film. That is intentional. The weight of the subject matter deserves the weight of the process. Those images are meant to last generations. Film lasts generations.
If you have ever wanted a portrait made on film, that conversation starts the same way every project does. With a phone call or an email. Tell me what you are after.