As I write this we’re minutes from the end of 2011 and as this is the last blog post of the year  I thought it appropriate to show something from the 1st day of this year. When the year began I was a 100% digital photographer. I hadn’t used film for around 7 years and had no intention of doing so but by the time March had come around I had been seeing more and more work from other photographers that I admired and the quality of their images had a look and feel all of their own, they had soul and the thing they all had in common was film. I’d spend hours working on my digital files with Photoshop and filters, trying to get the ‘film look’ but no matter how close I got, the images lacked a soul, that organic look and feel that you only get with film. In the end it dawned on me, if I wanted the film look then why not just shoot on film?

I learnt photography by using film in the mid 80’s so using it wasn’t anything new or scary and fortunately I had kept all of my old cameras. Going back to using film is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and it’s given me a new love for photography and the craft of creating images that I never had in the 8 years I’ve been using digital. It was like coming home after being away for a very long time.

I’d like to thank everyone that’s visited this blog during the year, all of the people that have been kind enough to stop and be photographed and to all of the photographers out there that have inspired me to get back to the root of photography and to fall in love with film, again. I’m excited about 2012, there are still tons of films in my backlog that haven’t been scanned yet so apologies if you’re waiting to see your portrait. I’m working on it 🙂

1st January 2011 (Nikon D700, digital).

Last portrait of 2011 (Mamiya RZ67, film).