Photos & Story by Lance Phillips
Film photography’s graininess and little imperfections bring a nostalgic (for those of us old enough to remember when film was king) look to photos you can’t get with digital cameras. But it’s not just the imperfections that keep bringing us back to film–it’s also the great latitude in dynamic range film provides. Shooting film usually requires metering for the shadows, meaning if your camera has a built-in light meter, you’ll aim toward a shadowy area in your frame and lock that exposure before re-framing and releasing the shutter.
Digital cameras usually operate the opposite way. Highlights often get blown out with digital cameras, so you’ll meter for the highlights and lighten the shadows in post or bracket with multiple exposures.
Metering for shadows with film would seem intuitively backward, warranting anxiety as you wait for your roll to develop. As we see here, though, with our Aerostar captured in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a couple of years ago, metering for the shadows produces an other-worldly look to our billowy cumulus clouds above. It reminds me of a Ralph Gibson photo from the 70s.
In these photos, the grains produced by the film developer and the dust spots and other little imperfections provide a perfectly nostalgic reminder of film’s greatness.
In this month’s issue, T&T writer Pete Ruskay takes us back to his check-hauling days in an Aerostar in the Northeast U.S. I thought it would be a good time to offer these film photos to complement Pete’s story.
