Shooting weddings on film can be a little nerve racking which is why Dave Draffan and I shot this one along side eachother so we didn’t miss a beat. The Punchbowl has acres of locations around it so we were spoilt for choice when it came to photograph the two of them alone. Dave was getting everything on digital which left me a little time to experiment. The Church is the very beautiful Our Lady Of The Wayside in Grasmere and the rain and storms were blowing in that morning. Even though it was only slightly calmer when we got to the church we gave it a green light for images outside sfter the service.

The Images that you see here are all film. I have left the digital images out to concentrate on getting the best from these film images. Not knowing what you have and seeing how the light has fallen onto the film is a great way of working for me and helps me to visualize what I want the final image to look like. These images are untouched and as such are straight from the Camera as the Ilford HP5 film has seen it. Wedding Photography at the Punchbowl looks very different through black and white film.

Some of these files have dark corners or ‘vignetting’ as it is called in camera speak. This is just a natural property of the lens that the Yashica 55 camera has and it really is a one trick pony for that reason. colour images look nowhere near as nice as black and white due to the colours becoming oversaturated at the edges. With Black and white though, it allows me to produce some beautiful results. I have seen the digital version of this file that I took afterwards and to me it doesn’t even come close.

Obviously we shot digital images alongside these film images and to see those feel free to visit Dave Draffans site where he has a full blog post dedicated to this beautiful Lake District wedding. Just the mad creative stuff on here though 😉

There is nothing more honest than a black and white negative either. It isn’t something that is easily replicated and the tone and texture of these images is testament to what this camera that is twice my age is capable of. Some of the locations in the Lakes really lend themselves to this black and white imagery that was pioneered by the likes of Stephen Taylor in the nineties using two (Olympus) cameras, one colour and one black and white. My images are not really documentary images but more of a nod towards the style of images that my clients find aesthetically pleasing.

I wish more photographers still saw film as something of a creative tool than something that now just costs the earth and is more of a pain to work with. For the client I will be producing some authentic black and white prints made in the open access darkrooms that I go to to compliment their digital files.