A Western Wonder

On a recent trip to Los Angeles, I got to satisfy my itch to shoot some film again, after ten plus years of living an exclusively digital life. Armed with my trustee Alpa, a film back and a bag of Kodak Portra, I went for a three day wander around California and beyond. And golly gosh, I really had forgotten how brilliant shooting with film is. Yes, it’s slower and more fiddly and more technically demanding, but those colours and tones and an indefinable softness really are magic. It’s not that I don’t still love my PhaseOne/Alpa combo, but there is something wonderful about the whole analogue process, not forgetting the joys of darkroom printing, that had quite slipped my mind.