Hopefully, as a photographer, I’ll never stop learning and pushing myself to improve. This year I’ve been lucky enough to attend workshops from some of my favourite wedding photographers, Jeff Newsom, Fer Juaristi… but last month I attended a workshop dedicated entirely to shooting film…. Film Is Not Dead.
The man behind the FIND workshop is the larger than life character that is Jonathan Canlas. Evelyne and I first met Jon when we modelled for his London workshop in 2011. He’s such an easy going, fun guy and he made some of our favourite ever photos of ourselves that I knew I needed to attend one of his workshops for myself. Even though I only shoot film for fun. I had no plans to move to film for my professional work but I knew I’d be inspired and could adapt what I learned to my work with DSLRs. So when Jon announced a 3-day workshop on the Spanish island of Ibiza I didn’t hesitate…
Evelyne and I headed to Ibiza the day after her birthday. The first time we’d been overseas together, without the kids, in over 5 years!
The workshop was far more than I ever imagined. I enjoyed shooting film way more than I expected but also found myself being inspired in so many other areas, from marketing and sales to forcing myself to think harder about composition, posing and the connections between people.
Add to that the truly amazing group of attendees on the workshop, every one of them a superb photographer in their own right. Fun was most definitely had.
But all that may have been dampened if, when the images came back from the lab, I wasn’t happy with the results.
I got them back. I’m pretty happy….
Thanks to Jon Canlas for a magnificent workshop in a beautiful location. Thanks to everyone who stood in front of my camera. And thanks to Evelyne for letting me do the workshop in the first place! It was a very worthwhile investment.
So, here are a selection of my favourite images from Ibiza. All on film. All unedited in Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.
Film, my friends, is not dead 
Shot on Kodak Portra 160, 400 & 800 and Kodak E100VS.