Arkansas newborn, milestone, and family portrait phototrapher

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Isabella | Artificial Light + Film Study

July 22, 2021

I absolutely love shooting in my studio. For a good part of the day, the natural light is absolutely beautiful, especially during the winter months when the leaves are not on the trees. This gets a little more challenging during the summer months. I schedule most of my senior sessions for evening before sunset and most of my seniors want studio and an outdoor location for their session (which I absolutely LOVE because it gives a great variety).

Shooting film at 5 in the evening with natural light is pretty difficult to do, with the lower lighting during that time. I began researching, talking with several photogs that shoot film with flash, and set up a shoot with one of my senior reps to really experiment with this. I shot all of these with a Pentax 645n on Kodak Portra 400. The first roll of film was shot with a flash set in the window and bounced off of the top of the window. The second roll of film was shot using two softboxes turned towards my subject.

We absolutely LOVED the results of these images!! I actually loved them so much that I use this method with all of my senior sessions that schedule in the evening. I love how the flash and soft box mimic the look of natural light and keep that consistency with the skin tones, etc. of all of the other images. I can’t wait to share more from other sessions using this method and love the versatility it gives me to shooting with film! Also, huge shout out to Isabella who took time out of her evening to dress up and model for me! She is a joy to work with and is a natural! Enjoy!

Film scanned by Photovision Prints

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