Mia Passon | Nashville, TN
At this point if you’ve been following me and my work for any amount of time you’re aware I enjoy shooting on film. Digital too. But film strikes a special chord for me. The same chord Jeff Buckley talked about in his song Hallelujah.
Yup, the secret one.
The reproduction of grain, light, chemicals, patience, and trust meet to form an image that you saw with your own eyes through a viewfinder that isn’t a screen of a screen. You’re looking at the real thing when the shutter clicks.
So when someone reaches out to me in response to my film photography and ask for an only film session, and only on black and white. I’m beyond thrilled at the request.
Mia is a model of Amax Agency located here in Nashville. I’ve really been a fan of the work and her lane of modeling she’s involved in. It’s very high fashion, beautiful, commercial, bold yet soft. So this was a privilege to bring something new to her portfolio with film.
We ended up deciding to use a location in Germantown that I’ve used before. It was supposed to be sunny and cold.
It was overcast and most definitely cold . lol.
I was grateful we were shooting black and white and thought “this could work out nice”. We had already discussed textures, patterns, and clothes prior so those things would translate with the overcast weather as my soft box.
Mia had brought a few pairs of clothes that we rotated between.
We had one textured wall, a brick building with a silver garage door and a set of steps.
This entire session was a mixture of HP5 and Tri-X film on 35mm and 120 film. Part of the fun with film are the way different film stocks reproduce images. They all shine a little different. I don’t have a favorite at the moment so I mixed the different rolls in for variety.
Mia was accompanied by her mom the day of our shoot and somewhere in between an outfit change and my loading a new roll of film in both my cameras I asked them “Do y’all ever get a picture together?”
Part of the magic of photography is capturing genuine moments. Fashion, portraits, people, memories.. everything. They happily posed for a mother daughter picture.
My Yahsica Mat-124 got a little sticky a few times during our shoot but I’m always impressed with the quality on 120 film through this camera.
I really loved re visiting this location with Mia and really loved the variety of looks we ended up capturing.
Here’s how I ended up sharing our work on Instagram.
