I didn’t know it was a passion. I thought everyone wanted to photograph everything. I thought everyone had a favorite photographer.
Then one afternoon in the school library, my television production teacher, Mr. Crowe, stopped a few of us mid-conversation. He pointed at me and said he could see I loved this, and that he wanted to help me do something with it.
Later that week he walked us to an office at the back of the library that he never used. He’d cleared it out and turned it into a darkroom. For us.
It was tiny. Two people fit comfortably, and there were almost always more of us crammed in there, developing rolls, making prints, teaching each other what we’d figured out. I still love the smell of darkroom chemicals, and the glow of our amber safelight. It’s a big part of why I use that same red glow lighting in my more creative sessions now. Some part of me is always trying to get back into that little room.
That little room set everything in motion. In 2002, I was awarded a $25,000 photography scholarship to study photojournalism at the University of Florida. Photojournalism taught me to tell the truth of a moment, and it’s still the backbone of how I document a wedding day.
Learning to see
Before that darkroom there was a slumber party in middle school. I stumbled upon a black and white photo book at a friend’s house. Her aunt was a film photographer in California, and she had a book of her work. I sat on the floor turning page after page long after everyone else had moved on.
That started a lifelong habit. I still hunt antique shops and thrift stores for old photo books. One of my most treasured is A Day In the Life of America, a collection from the ’80s that an older man I worked with gave me. Photographers all over the world documented life on the same single day. Every page is the same day seen through a completely different point of view.
I learn more about composition from an hour with a book like that than from a week on Pinterest. Printed work slows you down. It asks you to look at why a frame works, not just whether it’s pretty.
What I carry on your wedding day
My bag holds two cameras that mean more to me than anything else I own.
The first is a Nikon FM with a 50mm lens, my first film camera, given to me by my dad. The second is a Nikon F100 that I saved for two years to buy my senior year of high school. She still comes to every wedding.
I load them with two films I’ve loved for years. Kodak Portra is my color film. It’s warm and forgiving, with skin tones that glow and a color palette that feels like late afternoon light, even when it isn’t. Ilford HP5 is my black and white. It gives me rich contrast and blacks with real depth, the kind of timeless images that could sit in one of those old photo books I collect.
I also go looking for expired film on purpose. Old stock adds a texture and softness you simply can’t manufacture. Some rolls come back glowing. Some come back overexposed and washed out. Every one of them is beautiful in its own way.
Why film, still
Film is having a real resurgence, and I understand why. We live on screens. Everything is instant and endlessly deletable. Film is the opposite. It’s tangible, a little unpredictable, and it can’t be undone. People are craving that again.
For me it was never a trend. It’s just how I learned to see.
Here’s the honest difference. When I shoot digital, I’m documenting. I’m making sure the moment is captured, the story is told, and nothing important is missed. When I pick up a film camera, something shifts. My brain gets permission to stop recording and start feeling. I’m not chasing the moment anymore. I’m chasing the feeling inside it. It’s the same reason I care so much about how I approach posing. I’d rather guide you into a feeling than into a pose.
That’s what film brings to your gallery: a warmth I couldn’t create digitally if I tried.
Not an upgrade, just part of how I work
You won’t find film as an add-on in my packages. It isn’t an upsell, a tier, or a line item. It’s simply part of how I photograph weddings, woven alongside digital so your gallery holds both the full story and the feeling of it.
You can see it for yourself in Clara and Wyatt’s rainy day beach wedding and Danielle and Jake’s vineyard wedding.
In all my years of doing this, not one client has asked me to leave the film cameras at home. And not one has ever told me they wished I had.
If you’re drawn to that kind of intention, where your day is photographed by someone who still thinks the way a darkroom taught her to, I’d love to hear from you.
Get in touch here or learn more about how I approach wedding days here.
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