This is a personal favorite from my latest newborn session. Not typical of what you might see from a newborn portrait session (don’t worry, those are coming), but it stands out to me as more typical the kind of photo I shoot when I’m doing personal work.
I met Iris and her mother at their home in Greensboro, NC. It was a cloudy morning, but the diffused light spilling from the windows really set the mood perfectly. Iris was in a great mood and opening her eyes a lot, she was very curious about my camera I think.
During my time with these ladies I shot a couple rolls of film, mostly portraits of course - but this shot was more of something that just happened at the right time. Iris’ expression, waiting on the changing table for mom - and mom, walking right into the frame to tend to Iris…something about it really captures that moment for me. Moments like this, I feel, are the moments that you can look back on as a parent and genuinely treasure.
Meeting new babies is pretty awesome and being trusted to photograph them is an honor. I think the joy for photographing babies began for me when my son, Miles, was born. At the time I was in school working on my Photography degree and had access to pretty much anything darkroom-related you could imagine (man I miss those days!). I had fallen in love with my son, and fallen in love with film.
I took on a project for his first year of life, shooting one roll worth of photographs of him every day.
The project itself was really a lot of fun, and a lot of hard work. I was surprised at how much I learned about shooting little people under mostly challenging lighting conditions. But more surprising was how much these photos came to mean to me.
Having the first moments/days/weeks/months of your children’s lives on film is just invaluable. When you are home with your little one every day, changes can go un-noticed. One day just sort of gradually works it’s way into the next and, before you know it, your “baby” isn’t a baby anymore.
Shot with a Nikon F100 and 50mm f/1.4 lens on Fuji Neopan 400 film developed at TheDarkroom.
Notice the latitude (shadow and highlight detail) and behavior in a high contrast scene (specularity on the leaves specifically).
Again, I’m really impressed with this film.
I sent the film to The Darkroom, they do a great job and have great prices. $10/roll flat. And $2/roll for push/pull (flat fee, regardless of how many stops you want it one way or the other). I send ALL my color film there for my personal and professional work. Try them out and tell them I sent you :)
The guys at The Darkroom pushed this roll 3 stops for me (400>800>1600>3200 = 3 full stops), a couple days after I sent the film I had proofs online.
Kodak Portra 400 pushed to 3200 (Portraits) - A quick and surprising test!
I’m all about testing the limits of my film choices. Not a lot of people realize that the “box speed” of a film (the advertised ISO/ASA) is a recommendation…not necessarily the law.
Generally speaking color and black and white negative films have a pretty decent exposure latitude. Meaning you can over or under expose your negatives within a few stops and still get very usable results. Especially when you compensate for this under or over exposure with development time (a general rule is longer development for a push, and shorter development with a pull).
Since Portra 400 is my primary color film, I wanted to see just how far it can go (within reason)…I shoot a lot in low light. I have pushed B&W film up to about 6400-12800ASA with very acceptable results but never really tried my hand at pushing color negative film.
So, I shot a quick test roll of Portra 400 in 35mm (Nikon F100 w/50mm 1.4) right around dusk.
I sent the film to The Darkroom, they do a great job and have great prices. $10/roll flat. And $2/roll for push/pull (flat fee, regardless of how many stops you want it one way or the other). I send ALL my color film there for my personal and professional work. Try them out and tell them I sent you :)
The guys at The Darkroom pushed this roll 3 stops for me (400>800>1600>3200 = 3 full stops), a couple days after I sent the film I had proofs online.
And, whoa, was I impressed.
Bottom line here is:
The new Kodak Portra 400 with it’s whacky tabular grain structure handles pushing VERY well. Check out the example above! Notice the contrast, skin tone rendition, and tonal range. Very nice!
I would not hesitate now to shoot a paid assignment pushing this stuff 2-3 stops.
