Why I take imperfect wedding photographs with a Leica film camera

My introduction to film photography was towards the end of the 1980’s when I got a job working in the darkrooms of a daily newspaper. The standard way to become a press photographer back then was to start off by processing and printing the other photographers work in the black and white darkrooms. The picture editor shot weddings on a Saturday and took me under his wing as his unpaid assistant, back then wedding photography was still very formal and mostly consisted of set groups and portraits, in fact I remember him telling me there wasn’t anything to photograph during the ceremony and we would sit outside the church and wait to be called in for a fake signing of the register. This experience put me off wedding photography and I spent the next decade working as a press photographer. Towards the end of the 1990’s I became interested in photographing weddings in a more behind the scenes approach and became one of the early pioneers of documentary wedding photography – all shot on film of course! Then along came digital and I was keen to become an early adopter, some 1200 weddings and 25 years later I wanted a new challenge and decided to go back to shooting film!

The search for the right camera

In my search for the perfect film camera I tried out various cameras, firstly a Canon Eos1N that I already owned, the Canon sounded like a cannon every time I took a photograph – it was just too loud for quiet wedding ceremonies! I then tried my trusty Nikon FM and FE cameras, these worked well but didn’t totally fit my way of working and still had fairly loud shutters combined with mirror slap. At that point I purchased a Minolta CLE and immediately felt at ease with the compact size and rangefinder focussing, my only issue was the rangefinder base length is fairly short which makes it very difficult to focus fast aperture lenses or longer lenses, especially a 90mm that is sometimes required for church ceremonies. After much reading I purchased a Leica M4-P, this proved excellent from 28mm through to a 90mm lens.

Leica M4-P

My Leica does not get in the way, it doesn’t distract me, it has no electronics – not even a light meter. I tried a Leica M6 and M7 before purchasing my M4-P and found the red LED lights in the viewfinder distracting, I prefer the view through the M4-P which other than the frame lines has no distractions and nothing lighting up. I carry a small light meter and take a few quick readings to get an idea of what the light is doing, after than I just use my experience to estimate the exposure and I find this is much quicker than constantly checking with a meter. I use two cameras as I find I always run out of film at crucial moments and even with the quick loading on the M4-P it still takes a minute or two for me to rewind and load the next film.

How I photograph weddings on film

My approach to film wedding photography is to make images which have a strong analogue look to them, I see no point in film looking like digital. I embrace grain, motion blur and the imperfections and limitations of 35mm film. To me it is about how the images make you feel rather than trying to capture a perfect vision of how it looked. I love Leica Summicron lenses but equally like to use lenses with a lot of character, for example I have a 7Artisans 50mm F1.1 and really love the very imperfect way it sees the world, sharpness isn’t something that I am looking for!

I tend to find people either love or hate my style of film photography, I don’t worry about those who hate is as they are not going to be my clients, I’d rather stay true to my own vision than try to appeal to everyone.

I work in a photojournalistic style as an observer, capturing what I see. That doesn’t mean I slink away into the shadows as I work the exact opposite way, I mingle and chat with the guests while photographing the wedding like a professional guest, mostly they think I am just another invited guest with a fancy camera.

I hand develop my own film, both colour and black and white, in my small darkroom using a Jobo processor and hanging film to dry in a Jobo Mistral film dryer. I then scan them myself, I do have an enlarger and can make prints directly from negatives but find my clients want scans rather than just prints. I love having full control over the entire process and it feels like I am creating something.

I like to use Kodak Portra film for colour and sometimes Cinestill 800T, for black and white I really like Ilford HP5 plus which can be pushed to 1600iso with great results. I also sometimes use Leica Monopan film but as that is 50 ISO it is more limited to just bright conditions.

Why I photograph weddings on film

The why is maybe a little more complicated, firstly film and especially black and white film is my first love, there is a huge element of nostalgia for me. The real reasons run deeper though, I feel a lot of wedding photography has become very polished and over perfect, I also really dislike how AI is becoming common place in photography with it being used for everything from digital noise reduction to removing, changing or even creating elements in the image, to my way of thinking this reduces some of the skill of the photographer to how good they are at using AI tools in post production. Shooting film on a Leica rangefinder camera seemed as close as I can get to a pure photography experience and I’m lucky that couples book me to photograph their weddings on film and that I get paid to do something that I really love. I feel that film allows me to express myself creatively in a way that digital doesn’t.

Website: weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/35mm-film-wedding-photography/
Instagram: instagram.com/weddingphotojournalist/

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