Hohes Venn

Small daytrip to one of the more beautiful national parks of Belgium.

Mid-december, because of the dreadful Belgian weather, it can get somewhat challenging to shoot film. Therefore, a bit of flexibility and last-minute planning is required. I stopped working on my thesis at noon to jump in my car and drive off towards this exciting part of Belgium.

My gear: the Hasselblad 500CM, a few rolls of Fomapan 100, one Cinestill and of course a red filter! The latter one is extremely important when shooting black and white photos in nature. The light passing through the red filter is literally filtered: the red waves can pass and blue/green (being opposites in the light spectrum) are blocked. The result of this simple trick is that the skies get considerably darker and the red/yellow/orange tones get highlighted.

Of course, shooting colour film is just as interesting, however because each roll of colour film is so incredibly expensive, I try to do it less. These next shots were made using Cinestill 800T. My first time using it yet I already adore it!

Christmas in Brussels

A short photo walk in Brussels with my Hasselblad and a fellow photographer: Stephieslens. (check out here Instagram account here)

The challenge here: poor light, a lot of people, cold weather.

Sainte Catherine - Portra 400

Christmas Divorce

Marriage has long been associated with Catholicism in our country. Indeed, most couples still marry before the Church - whether it be because of true beliefs or a lingering sense of tradition. The following photograph therefore tells an unpleasant and disheartening story, that of a couple’s divorce a few days before Christmas.

Indeed, I was walking through the streets of Brussels close to Place Poulaert, famous for it’s large Palace of Justice. The composition was ideal: the former lovers sitting next to each other yet keeping distance. In the second window, we observe two lawyers fighting for their clients and in the last one we see a lonesome judge carefully listening. (Of course I can’t confirm if it was a divorce but let our imagination fill the blanks). This scene was taking place only a day or two before Christmas, the holiday of peace. Paradox.

Velvia is a particular type of film. Whilst most people know about negatives, this one is a “positive” image. Indeed, after developing the roll of film, you can already see the final image by holding the roll against a light source. This type of film was mainly used for diapositives (Diapo, dia’s,… the very boring slideshow that people gave for their friends after their holidays). It is way more challenging to shoot than regular film because you have to expose with much more care.

Most people will know that when shooting digital photos it’s better to underexpose because it is easier to “raise the shadows” than to lower the highlights. In film photography, however, the opposite is true. A lighter image has more detail than an underexposed image. Finally, Velvia 50 (the film I used for the girl and cat photo) is the opposite - again! Here it is better to underexpose slightly instead of overexposing. A detail I didn’t know at that time which explains the bright whites of this picture…

Pushing film

/!\ This is a technical piece of text: only intended for those of you who want to learn how to push film ;-) /!\

When progressing in analog photography, you will often hear the term “Pushing” film. It took me some time before I understood what it is exactly. First of all, we need to start with discussing the ISO of a film roll. ISO is basically a numerical scale to quantify how sensitive the photographic film is to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive it is and therefore the shorter you need to expose your shot. The factory will always recommend a specific ISO and in the photography community, that value is called the “Box Speed” (because it’s written on the box…)

The fun thing about shooting film is that you’re allowed to divert from these guidelines a bit. Let’s say you pretend the film roll should be rated at ISO 800 instead of ISO 400, then you basically assume that it’s twice as sensitive to light and thus, you need to reduce shutter speed by half as well. So, to make it a bit more concrete: when you’re shooting this Fomapan 400 at ISO 800, you’re underexposing the film significantly. If you were to develop the roll using traditional times, the picture would come out very dark.

And now comes the cool part: film exposure isn’t linear! The emulsion is VERY sensitive to high intensity light but as soon as it has been exposed a bit, it loses its initial speed. The longer you expose a film roll, the less contrast you will get between shadows and highlights exactly because the darker parts of the film roll still have more speed than the highlighted parts.

To conclude: when shooting at ISO 1600, the darker parts of your photo won’t have had any time to be exposed at all whilst the very bright parts of the picture will already have been recorded by the film roll. If you then put the exposed film roll in your bath of chemistry and you keep it in there a little longer than usual, you brighten up the picture and you get a very interesting harsh contrast on your photos!