The Boyer Ranch on Film by Steven Billups
Every now and then we get a workshop participant who solely shoots in film. Steven Billups is one of those photographers who has held fast to the traditional techniques of silver printing. During our Weston Workshop at The Boyer YL Ranch this year, he only photographed with film. The one thing that is limiting when a photographer only shoots film is that we aren’t able to see the true vision they are capturing during the morning reviews. Steven decided that he would use his iPhone to take “snapshots” of the scene he was photographing to give us an idea of that concept he was going for.
One of the magic properties about film is that you don’t know for sure what you captured during the moment. After shooting film for awhile, however, you can have a pretty good understanding of the outcome of the shoot. Shooting film also slows the photographer down and really limits the amount of images you capture. Steven was shooting medium format so that is either 10-12 captures per roll! While his iPhone images during the workshop gave us a good understanding of the scene he was looking at, these processed film images reveal the true vision he was going after and it is a real treat to see. Keep up the good work, Steven!
