Today I received my Morocco films back from the lab. They’re Kodak Portra shots, C41 Processing, which means they are negatives. No contact sheets, so I’m just going through each roll, blind.

This is the very first image I’ve just scanned tonight, and it’s apparent to me that I will be shooting film for portraits from now on.

I was shooting all my material on film until about a year ago. It’s been a trial to move to digital because it simply doesn’t respond the same way or look similar. Digital’s biggest drawback is in the realm of portraiture. I’m sure I’ll be rubbing a lot of people up the wrong way, but I know because I’ve tried both. Rather than browse the internet for opinions, look at the images for proof, or better still, try it out for yourself.

Digital just doesn’t have this look to it. The skin tones are hard to reproduce in digital, and well, there’s something organic about film to my eye.

This was shot in Marrakech, near the main square. He’s quite hip isn’t he? I like his gelled hair, and he was very approachable. He is a modern Moroccan whereas many of the others I photographed seemed to come from a much older time.

I found a lot of the locals in Marrakech were very warm and friendly to each other, but not to the tourists.

It was a hard place to photograph as the camera is treated as a serious intrusion to their lives and religion. But now and then I’d meet someone who was a willing participant. I’ll post more in the coming days as I work through the films.

One of my most favourite things to do with landscapes is to collapse many moments in time into one frame. In other words, do long exposures. I use several techniques for this, but I thought it would be good to upload a reciprocity table for Fuji’s Velvia 50 RVP.

Long exposure of the Pap of Glen Coe, Scottish Highlands

Just in case you don’t know what reciprocity is, I’ll explain. When shooting film, most folk think that the relationship between the shutter and aperture are always linked. They’re not. As you get down to longer exposures, film loses it’s sensitivity; the relationship between the shutter speed and aperture fall apart, typically once you get past 2 seconds with Velvia. Which means that if you rely on your meter, you’re going to underexpose your images. So you need to compensate.

Now, you might wonder how on earth it’s possible to generate an exposure that requires more than 2 seconds to expose. Even during sunrise when the light level is low, and you’re shooting at f22, the meter may only say 2 seconds at the lowest range. So how is it possible to shoot for longer? Simple, I use full ND filters – often stacking up to 5 stops of ND in front of the lens, so that I end up with exposures around 30 seconds or perhaps a minute of two. Coupled with a compensation factor to make sure the exposure isn’t underexposed, the exposure times will be often double that.

Click on the chart for a larger, printable version

The chart has three columns. The first shows the indicated exposure time – what the camera meter may say. The second column shows what you should actually expose at. For instance, if the meter says you should expose for 10 seconds, you should actually shot for 16 seconds. Film has lost it’s sensitivity, so you are basically adding a little bit extra on top to correct for this. There is also a third column – ‘Magenta CC Filter’. Velvia apparently goes a little green the longer you expose it, and the suggested way to correct this is to use a magenta filter. They come in different strengths as you can see on the graph. To be honest though – I’ve never seen the green cast that people talk about, so I simply don’t use this column, but it’s there if you feel you need it. Who knows, perhaps I’m green-blind!

So why do I want to shoot long exposures? For mystery, in order to create a scene that is a departure from reality. I love surreal images, and if I find a good landscape where the clouds are moving fast for instance, a long exposure allows the movement of the sky to be recorded. It can add a sense of movement or drama to an image. There are any other reasons, but generally, I tend to find the blurring of moving water, moving sky can radically change the experience of how we view the image.

This was shot on a very dreary day. We’d had a lot of bad weather for the week in Torres del Paine, but every cloud has a silver lining, and in this instance, the inclemental weather was adding drama and some fleeting moments of very nice light.

Its almost back lit, as the sun is coming in from the left, but obscured by all the low cloud over Glacier Grey (which you can see in the distance). The mountains are part of the Torres massif, and I think this is part of Paine Grande. We were walking along the beach on our way to taking some shots of the bergs and the weather just seemed to do a few drastic changes in the space of about 15 minutes. Calm and serene and then by the end of it the wind had kicked up and the lago was filled with big waves. It was hard to stand up, let alone use the tripod.