Tala Saman goes Analog
Tala Saman is a DJ and a fashion blogger who is best recognized for having founded the style blog My Fash Diary. The site was nominated for a number of awards including Marie Claire, UK Blog, and Twitter awards.. She started the blog way back when blogs were only starting to be cool (2009), and she’s still at it. I’ve shot Tala many times before over the years, and a couple of years ago we met up in New York and had a quick shoot where I also pulled out my latest acquisition, an old Nikon FM2, and shot a couple of quick images with that on kentmere film. She ended up loving the film results and really wanted to do another one eventually.
Fast forward to 2020, we are all in lockdown and I’m shooting my Analog Bridges project on Zoom. I knew Tala would a great subject and asked her to be a part of it. She loved the project and really wanted to but we were not able to schedule it, eventually the weather got better and I made a joke saying forget Zoom let’s shoot film in person instead ? She had just gotten back to Dubai ( she’s always traveling, even during pandemic year ! ) and we managed to agree on a date and time. With her epic connections she hooked us up with the most amazing location on Bluewaters, Cove Beach at the Caesar’s Palace. I convinced my good friend and amazing photographer Anna Shtraus to join me to help out and shoot a BTS for fun.
It was a strange feeling, the day before the shoot as I prepared a bag with nothing digital. I ended up packing 3 film cameras ( and a fourth that Anna brought with her ). I started to have a bit of anxiety at night, questioning myself, with the fear that one of the biggest influencers in the middle east is giving me her time and effort and I can screw it up if I don’t load the film right, or the developing process goes to hell. But I had already decided that I will not bring any digital bodies, and only shoot on film. I talked myself out of planning a back up and loaded up with a ton of different types of film.
I used my trusty Nikon fm2 and shot only black and white images with that. The second camera was the Hasselblad 500 cm, which I decided would hold the Kodak Ektar and Portra 120 mm film ( I had 2 speeds, 160 iso and 400 iso ). The third camera was the lomo queen of cameras, the Diana. I attached a cheap plastic long lens on to that ( usually it’s got a cheap, plastic fish eye on there ), shot color with it’s little plastic flash on top and finally the fourth camera was Anna’s point and shoot olympus, with a built in flash that I used my expired Kodak Gold 200 film on.
The results were mixed, but there was something kickass in every roll ! Luckily no blank rolls or any issues.
I developed the black and whites from the 35 mm Nikon FM2 myself, with Kentmere 100 film being the deliciously smooth at a 100 iso, and ilford bringing me the grain with the HP5 400:
So yeah, I love black and white portraiture. I could shoot black and white portraiture alone for the rest of my life, and I wouldn’t mind.
I expected the point and shoot to have the worst images since it was expired film which can be a bit too grainy, and no control over the shooting beyond composition either ( and not really since it’s not an SLR ) but it ended up with some of my favorite images ! So thanks again Anna for bringing that lovely point and shoot with you for me to use.
A quick word though, about the epic woman that is Tala Samman, who you probably already follow on instagram @myfashdiary. She’s so laid back, graceful, effortless and game for anything. She did give me a look of are you serious when I told her I don’t have any digital cameras with me. She prudently did make me photograph her with her phone here n there, and ofcourse I did that, we were having such good fun shooting! But her trust in me to show up with only film was pretty comforting to me. And you know what, one of those iphone images lookin pretty epic up on her instagram now :
So yeah, all during my analog haze I shot a few killer iPhone photos too.
But let’s get back to my analogous madness. The Olympus helped me create some of the coolest portraits, I mean this gorgeous woman looks absolutely stunning in expired film ! Thank you Kodak Gold !
How epic did those turn out ? Might be my favorites if it wasn’t for the absolute perfection that is the black and white images, or those strange mistakes in the Diana lomo that led to weird subtle color shifts that I love. I love the grain. I eat it up !
Oh the Diana.
The world of lomo photography. So haphazard, so out of control, so strange. Here’s the images, which I used Kodak Ektar 100 and a Portra 400 with. I guess I’m lucky I had a flash for the Diana camera, since it got dark so darn fast.
Mixed results but I like the romantic aspects of the images. Zooming in, they have stuch a strange texture and color shifts to them. That’s that lovely plasticity of the lomo. And check out the one moment where I forgot to roll the film and exposed twice on one strip of 120 mm film !
Overall, I’m into them too !
Finally, the Hasselblad that was meant to blow ALL the other images out of the water. I feel like it was a bit of a hit or miss, maybe I was not getting my lightmeter readings right, maybe the low light got to me? The sun did set awfully fast that day. Maybe the color processing wasn’t as impressive ? I might be disappointed with Kodak Portra a slight bit ! I didn’t develop the color myself but gave it in, to a small company here in DXB, I really liked their scans as well but it was just not high rez…so I rescanned everything myself again. His scans looked much better than mine sometimes in terms of color, but mine are sweet too. Maybe I didn’t shoot enough with the hassie. Should have given it more time. With just 12 images, I guess the heaviest and bulkiest camera of the 4 was getting the least attention. I do like them though.
So there you have it ! One shoot with 4 different film cameras and some film. Ok, more than some. 7 rolls in total ! Three 35mm, and four medium format 120 mms. Clearly my shutterfinger has not fully grasped the implications of each click when it’s not digital. Next shoot i shall curb my enthusiasm a bit and shoot a few less rolls. I guess I was overshooting for back up in case a roll goes south. And 4 cameras. That’s too many cameras.
Overall I still felt the stillness of film, the urgency of getting the composition right and there was still a healthy amount of play in it too. I do wish i could read the metadata off the images haha ! See how the digital mind corrupts us ! I loved that I had to make each click count, and there was such little room for error, there was a lot of mindfulness involved in analyzing the locations, chasing the sun and deciding what camera will work better for a particular look or location.
Check back and I’ll post a BTS video soon ! I’ll just add it onto this post most likely.
Would love to know your thoughts on this 4 camera project ! Do you think by dividing my time between cameras it affected the final results ? Would you like to see me try it again ?