My Ten Favorite Film Photos Of 2023

This was the year when I found film. I happened by accident really. I never thought that I would get into film photography. I spent a couple of days watching videos on William Eggleston on YouTube. When I was done I saw a video by Nick Carver on the sidebar as a recommended video. I clicked on it, and immediately loved what he was doing. That inspired me to give this film thing a shot. I have a lot to learn. That has been the fun of this whole thing though. It has helped me see things a little differently and definitely informed the rest of my photography this year. I am not going to number these. They will just be my ten favorites in a random order.

I am going to start things off with a photo of my little one. I bought a Polaroid camera to start things off, and of course I saw that it had a multi-exposure feature on it. My $6,000 Sony camera does not have this feature, but this plastic camera does. I wanted to try it out right away so my first photo on it was this multi-exposure of my daughter.

One film that I was dying to try was 800t by CineStill. I liked the look of the film, and I had some ideas of places to try it out. Of course Dog n Suds with all of the neon was on that list. I like how this turned out.

Another 800t image that I made on campus here. The halation is a fun thing to play around with. I love the way that all of the lights glow. This is one of my favorite spots on campus to make a photo so it made sense to try it out here.

I had some fun at the car lot with a couple of cameras and film. Here you can see two images. One made with Lomography 100 and the other with Kodak Ultramax 400. Part of the fun of film is the different ways that it will render a scene. I had some fun this year trying to emulate some of those film looks in Lightroom. A lot of my work during the second half of the year was informed by these days out making photos with my film cameras.

One huge bonus of getting a Canon SLR film camera was that I could use my Canon 11-24mm lens again. That was by far my favorite lens, and when I switched to Sony it was one of a couple of lenses that I kept. It is now back in use which is really cool. That lens just had a look to it. Here I used it to show Ross Ade Stadium on gameday.

One fun thing about film is how much of it is out there right now. They have all kinds with fun names. Here is a photo I made with a film called Frankenstein around Halloween. It had a really cool black and white look to it that reminded me of the old monster movies.

My favorite film so far has been Portra 400. There is just something about how the scenes look with it that I love. Here I had some fun during a quick stop in Lebanon, Indiana. That courthouse and the sky was just asking for the Portra.

Here is another Portra image, but this time I converted it to black and white. The cloudy sky was not doing much for me so I just desaturated the photo. I love the look that it gave me for this classic old brick building.

Here is another Portra 400 image from Lebanon, Indiana. Once again the colors are what I love about this film. I knew on the scene that it would bring out the colors in the buildings and sky very well. I was not wrong.

This photo of Triple XXX was made with Ilford HP5 400 film. I love the way that it captured this night scene. I am still on the fence about black and white film. I convert a lot of my photos to black and white. I actually like the look. I also like color images at times, and if I can convert them to black and white it does not take much. Here though it was the right film at the right time.

I really did not know what I was getting myself into when I started this film thing. I did a bad job of working those photos in with the rest of my photos. This year I have learned a little, and coming up with this list should not be such a chore. Today starts a few days of best of posts on the blog. Looking back at last year is a good way to plan this year a little better. I started doing these a decade ago when it was much easier to put together. This year I think that I will go back to just posting my top tens from each category. That makes things a little easier for me writing up the posts. Writing blurbs for 23 or more photos for each category every day can start to be a lot. I may leave some photos out this way, but knowing me I will find a way to work them in. This was a new thing for me this year. Each year when I put these lists together my goal is to do better the following year. Being year two with film hopefully I can top this list next year.