My Best Film Portraits Yet // Mamiya RZ67 Review

Hey guys welcome hey what’s going on you guys welcome to the video sorry this one got delayed i tried out a new film lab for this um post and i have to say that the results came out really well coming with you with a nice turtleneck sweater today it is quite windy in the bay area so i thought it was appropriate to wear one for this video in my bedroom now i have had a very positive experience shooting with film shooting with friends for these youtube videos i’ve been putting out for you guys for almost like a year now and i have to say that this session right here with my old high school friends with paolo being the model and other of the guys uh helping me out with like reflectors with recording with moral support i felt like this session was probably the smoothest run one which made the results even better than it would have been had i been running it by myself or only with one other person.

i also wanted to start this video in my room because i usually say the same things over and over again when i’m like starting a video outside which is like hey we’re in this location in sf and we’re going to be shooting on film with this film stock uh yada yada this i’m gonna share my thoughts on voiceover and let’s get down to it i always say let’s get down to it for every single one of my videos so uh i wanted to switch it up by being a little bit more casual and comfortable and candid before this video started but um let’s get to it so the first location that we shot in was the dog patch neighborhood of san francisco and you guys have seen this location pop up many times as one of my favorite spots favorite neighborhoods in the city and the corner that we were using in also shows up in a lot of my videos but that quarter itself this time was laden with like asphalt with like a lot of gravel it’s a very industrial looking area and sometimes it’s really surprising how many images that you could pull out of like one corner one block of a street because either it’s a very versatile spot the the model’s outfit works with the location very well or you’re just like in that creative flow state where you can just make anything out of one spot and it just looks so good and also it’s really cool to use your environment to your advantage like over here like in this corner of the dog patch there’s a lot of bright walls a lot of like bright concrete everywhere so lighting is like super even.

but sergio my buddy was holding up a reflector to help even out that lighting and then point the reflector most of the b-roll is gonna be for sergio yes and for this first location paulo was wearing a very grunge outfit minus the flannel he’s wearing like heavy black pants with heavy black boots a nice white uh fitted top and a vest over it and i felt like it went really well with the chain that he was wearing the glasses and the color of his hair it is like a nice like edgy look for a more industrial edgy location so the the motif of that was very consistent across these photos i also loaded up kodak patricia 160 just kidding kodak portra 160. i actually hardly ever use this film stock uh i think i’ve only used one roll of portrait 160 in my entire like span of shooting film so it was a great time to use that because it was a midday sunlight scenario so there’s no need to use like iso 400 or anything faster than that it would have been a waste there was one shot in this location where i asked paulo to scream his head off because i want to see like his neck flex and like a natural exertion in his face i think i should have gone closer to him.

because i got a full body image of him doing that if i had gone closer to him i probably would have seen those details of his neck or his face like straining with the exertion of his screen but you can’t really tell it kind of just looks like he’s opening up his mouth for the second location we went to a cherry blossom tree that was really close to the richmond district of san francisco but we were still in golden gate park the outfit that we changed to was a more relaxed casual one as you guys can see just a nice adidas baseball cat with a white tee and some corduroy pants i think that’s what he was wearing and i felt like this uh matched the more relaxed tone of the location compared to the more industrial one that we were at first this is where the reflector really shined no pun intended because there were a lot of tall trees around us and the sun was getting into a position that would have uh casted really long shadows across paulo’s face so having sergio there to hold the reflector in the right positions really made the nice um difference that i needed in these pictures.

it was also kind of cool to have like that contrast of the nice peaceful scene that cherry blossoms usually evoke contrast with paulo’s grungy look yeah like his outfit changed to a more relaxed tone but the contrast of moods were still present in my opinion it’s not a bad thing to have that like in in the first location the motif of edginess was like you know very prominent across the board but for here there’s a little bit of contrast of mood but i kind of liked how this one came out and you could comment down below about what you think about that in terms of like outfitting or styling your model to go along with the location or to go against the location so there’s there’s there’s a market for both i wouldn’t say that one is like stronger or weaker than the other or if there’s like one that’s just wrong to do but it’s always fun to experiment that way and in this scenario it worked out in my [Music] opinion you know moving forward with these like youtube videos of like doing portrait sessions.

i don’t want to like uh keep staying in this like infinite cycle of only creating content that just looks good well like creating videos of photos that just look good i want to like advance uh my development um in this craft because having intention and having like a theme or some kind of like mission to unite all these photos or all these photo sessions together um just gives it more purpose like yes i definitely want to entertain you guys and you are learning along with me because i’m not a super professional about film photography and i’m sure that some of you guys watching this are but yeah moving forward um i just want to like have this like unifying theme or this at least unifying goal um to create photos that mean something that go beyond just like a good looking photo but actually like tells emotions speaks stories so on and so forth and i feel like that could be pretty difficult.

when i’m on this like cycle of pushing out two videos a week of yeah tuesdays are film photos and fridays are digital photos or compositions stuff like that um but yeah i want to like change it up like move forward uh past like just creating images that look good nothing wrong with that it creatively satisfies you because it creatively satisfies me uh then just keep doing it that’s awesome but for me like um i don’t know this is expensive one uh to do like on a weekly basis uh two um i just you know wanna have like more creative purpose in doing these things so hopefully we get to do that uh this was an incredibly fun shoot again these are the best film portraits that i’ve ever created in my opinion.

because of the process the the reflection the modeling and everything in between the film stocks so yeah thank you guys for watching make sure you subscribe like the video and comment down below about what you thought uh about this video and like what you think about your own uh process moving forward with your photography from this day forward like do are you still in the phase of like trying to explore like how to either recreate photos that inspired you or are you in the phase of like trying to make a book a zine or some kind of like style that you’re trying to solidify because we’re all on this journey uh our own unique journey of developing our own style our own eye and something that resonates with the soul in here and i’m just trying to find my own right now with that so it’s going to be a very exciting ride and um yeah i will see you guys in the next video thank you guys for watching and um peace.