Embrace the Shadows

October 14, 2017 by Phil Kneen Photography

They’re everywhere – peachy coloured, backlit portraits of redheads and brides, shot on Kodak Portra 400, over-exposed by 5 stops and metered for the shadows. These images have become, in analogue photography, what HDR is to digital… I don’t even know the word? What’s so hackneyed and worn-out that it goes beyond cliché? This method of shooting colour negative film has become so prevalent that it now seems to be the default, photographers ‘shooting at box speed’ has become the minority. […]

Categories: film photography • Tags: 6x7, analogue, colour, film, film camera, film photography, fuji pro 400H, I shoot film, isle of man, kodak portra 400, negative, pentax 67, personal project, portrait

Anxiety

September 11, 2017 by Phil Kneen Photography

I drive past these scenes on the Isle of Man at least once a week, some of them are on my daily driving route. I can’t explain why the locations and the images I produced make me feel uneasy, but they do. One way roads, boarded up buildings, seemingly abandoned caravans and camper vans with hints of habitation all fill me with a strange anxiety and sense of ambiguity… All images were made using a Fuji GA645 medium format camera and […]

Categories: film photography, Photography, photojournalism • Tags: 645, anxiety, expired film, Fuji GA645, isle of man, kodak portra 400

An early morning with Matt Creer

April 20, 2017 by Phil Kneen Photography

For the second time in about three years, I’ve been working with Matt Creer, shooting the artwork for his latest album. I liked the photographs we made in back then, which I shot on digital. However, we are both in agreement that these recent images, shot on film, unquestionably have a depth and an almost fourth dimension that the 2014 shots lacked. Photo sessions with Matt are always enjoyable, despite the odd 5am start; in a city, this wouldn’t represent […]

Categories: film photography, Music, Photography • Tags: 35mm, 6x7, canadian film lab, film photography, fuji superia 400, kodak portra 400, Matt Creer, portrait

Two and a quarter square.

February 13, 2017 by Phil Kneen Photography

I have to confess; I came close to selling my Hasselblad last week. I got another batch of films back, and there were a lot of disappointingly mediocre shots, in my opinion. But then I looked again – I think to go from years of shooting in the rectangular ratio back to square has confused my compositional mind, and I’m just not used to seeing my images that way. So I’m going to persevere – I’ve set myself a challenge; […]

Categories: film photography, Photography • Tags: 501cm, film camera, hasselblad, I shoot film, isle of man, kodak, kodak portra 400, negative, personal project, portrait, square

The things I saw (Tokyo) #9

May 3, 2016 by Phil Kneen Photography

I remember, years ago, falling asleep on the sofa whilst listening to a Travis CD, ‘The Man who’. I must have gone-off around about the end of ‘She’s so strange’, what followed seemed to be an eternity of silence, then the secret track kicked in – well I nearly soiled my pants – I’d listened to this CD dozens of times and had no idea there was a secret track. I never listened to it again after that, I was […]

Categories: film photography, Photography, travel • Tags: fuji 400H, japan, kodak portra 160, kodak portra 400, nikon 28mm 1.8G, nikon 50mm 1.4G, nikon f100, tokyo, UK Film Lab

Jarrod Dickenson

February 17, 2016 by Phil Kneen Photography

“Storytelling is something of a Texas tradition. Tall hats and even taller tales are woven into the fabric of The Lone Star State, and singer-songwriter, Jarrod Dickenson can spin a yarn with the best of them. Hailing from Waco, now based in Brooklyn, Dickenson spends most of his time on the road bringing his own particular brand of soulful americana to a wide variety of music loving audiences around the globe” All images made with Nikon F100, 28mm and 50mm […]

Categories: Music, Photography • Tags: 1600, 35mm film, film photography, I shoot film, isle of man, jarrod dickenson, kodak portra 400, nikon 28mm 1.8G, nikon 50mm 1.4G, portrait

Standard Practice.

February 9, 2016 by Phil Kneen Photography

The last 35mm camera I used before selling-up and switching to digital, around the time of the Millennium, was the Nikon F100. In fact, I had two – the rugged bodies had that weighty feel that oozed quality and reliability. I’ve always missed that reassuring gravitas that even today’s flagship digital models seem to lack… so when a friend of a friend offered me, out of the blue, a mint condition Nikon F100, I couldn’t say no. The F100 arrived […]

Categories: film photography, Photography • Tags: domke, film photography, fuji natura 1600, I shoot film, kodak portra 400, lens, nikon 50mm 1.4G, nikon f100, portrait, shoot film not megapixels, standard

Imperfect Symmetry

January 13, 2016 by Phil Kneen Photography

I remember my art teacher attempting to explain ‘The Rule of Thirds’ to me when I was about 14. When I got my first camera, I tried to follow this practice – placing the point of interest to one side of the frame… but I didn’t like any of the photographs, they just didn’t feel right. For a while I honestly believed that this rule, this Golden Section as it is known in the art world, was an actual real […]

Categories: film photography, Photography • Tags: 6x7cm, 6x9cm, film, fuji GW690III, I shoot film, kodak portra 400, pentax 67

This is my land…

January 13, 2016 by Phil Kneen Photography

Nothing in the Jungle is permanent… in fact, most of what you see in these photographs – taken less than a month ago – no longer exists. Over the last few weeks, officials in Calais have been fencing-off and ‘reclaiming’ large portions of the camp… in some cases to install ‘semi-permenant’ shelters with shipping containers, but in other areas the clearances are unexplained. I’m not necessarily saying that some of these relocations are a bad thing… human rights lawyers have […]

Categories: film photography, photojournalism • Tags: 35mm, calais, film, france, fuji natura 1600, kodak portra 400, migrants, nikon f100, Olympus mju II, pentax 67

An Ordinary Day

January 10, 2016 by Phil Kneen Photography

Christmas Day in the Jungle was pretty much as I’d expected, most of the people there are either Muslim or Orthodox Christians… Muslims don’t do Christmas, obviously, and the Orthodox Christians don’t celebrate it until the 7th January. So the 25th December was much like any other day, in fact the only real sign of the festive season was an English charity worker wearing a mince-pie jumper, a Santa hat, pushing a wheelbarrow… actually one of the few aid workers […]

Categories: photojournalism • Tags: calais, france, fuji superia 400, kodak portra 400, migrants, Olympus mju II, pentax 67, portrait, the jungle