Why I Still Shoot Film On Wedding Days

HOW I STARTED OUT WITH FILM

Analogue film was how I first started in photography. Learning how to develop film and make prints in the darkroom was basically the thing that got me hooked in the first place. When people talk about the magic of an image appearing before your eyes in the developing tray they aren’t lying!

THE WAIT IS THE POINT

With a digital camera, you know within seconds whether a shot worked. With film, you shoot the whole day on faith and hope. You don’t get to check the back screen, you don’t get a second chance at that exact moment, and you won’t know if you got the shot until the negatives come back from the lab. That sounds like a flaw. In practice, it’s the opposite, it’s what makes the whole process feel alive. Sending a roll off and waiting to see what survived the day is genuinely one of my favourite things, even when a frame or two doesn’t come back the way I hoped.

We’re craving things we can hold

Film didn’t disappear because it stopped being good. It disappeared because everything got faster and easier, and convenience won for a while. Now it’s coming back, the same way vinyl did. I think it’s the same instinct in both cases: we spent a decade with everything living on a screen, and we missed having something with weight. A wedding album you can put on a shelf hits differently than a folder buried in cloud storage. Film leans into that. The grain, the slight colour shifts roll to roll, the negatives themselves as physical objects none of it is replicated by a download link.

I’m not chasing perfect, I’m chasing a feeling

I don’t lose sleep over whether an image is tack-sharp at 100% zoom. That’s never been the point for me. What I care about is whether a photo makes you feel something when you look at it. Whether it pulls you back into the room, the light, the noise of that exact moment. Film does that in a way that’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. The slight imperfections are part of why it works, not despite them.

HOW MANY ROLLS OF FILM ARE INCLUDED?

At present I photograph using film alongside my normal digital coverage. For my full day “Giant Steps” package it includes approximately 3-5 rolls of 35mm film. Sometimes I may use more than 5, I won’t charge you by the roll for the extra. The reason I don’t offer the options to add extra rolls is that I wouldn’t want to take film images just because they have been paid for, I want as many of them to be good as possible!

CAN YOU PHOTOGRAPHY THE ENTIRE DAY ON FILM?

If this is something that you would be interested in the I’m certainly able to do it, however this will come with additional costs due to the expense of film. Let me know and we can discuss options!

Whats in my film photography bag right now

My film setup for weddings at the moment goes a bit like this:

Cameras: Canon EOS 3+35mm f1.4L / Leica M6+Voigtlander 28mm f2 Ultron / Yashica Minitec Super (Basically a Yashica T4 IYKYK)

Film: Kodak Portra 400/800 / Ilford HP5+ / Cinestill 800T – Also love a bit of Kodak Gold 200

If you’re thinking about it for your own day

If you’re planning a wedding and like the idea of a few rolls of film alongside the usual digital coverage, or even a fully analogue day, I’d love to talk it through with you. Get in touch and let’s chat about what that could look like for your day.