This anniversary session is one for the books and will go down as one very near and dear to my heart.  Yes, I love the couple behind my lens.  But it’s more than that.  This session was the first time I braved hybrid photography.

If you’re not a photographer, you more than likely haven’t heard the term before.  Hybrid photography is the use of both film and digital photography.  After going to a workshop last year, I was introduced to the idea of shooting film.  My first thoughts: what’s the point?  After all, it’s fairly expensive and it’s outdated technology, right?  But over the last year, I found myself following more and more film photographers.  Lately I’ve noticed myself being attracted to photos that were shot with film.  So what’s the big deal?  To be honest I’m still trying to define the difference myself.  It certainly captures light in a different way.  The skin tones are naturally creamy and the image itself just feels so natural and organic.   I’m sure if you ask other film photographers, they would be able to define the difference for you much more clearly.  All I know at this point is that 9/10 times I can tell the difference between film and digital and there’s just something so special about film that keeps attracting me to it.

To be honest, I had absolutely no expectations for this session.  I reached out to Tori and asked if her and Mike would be up for taking some early Sunday morning pictures on the beach at Maumee Bay with my new (used) film camera that I finally decided to buy.  Turns out their anniversary was coming up that week- so it was the perfect opportunity for them to celebrate with some updated portraits. It was a guessing game for me.  I had no experience shooting film and really no clue what I was doing.  All I knew is when I took that last shot, heard the film roll up, and dropped it in the mail the next day, I felt extremely excited to see what had just happened.  And much, MUCH to my pleasant surprise, the film scans came back SO BEAUTIFUL.  I had to do almost NO editing.  Which is basically unheard of in the digital word.  All in all, I couldn’t be happier that I finally stepped out of my comfort zone.  No, I’m no expert.  No where near it.  But I look forward to this new journey and what it holds.