Birtsmorton Court wedding on 35mm film

Storm Amy put an end to an outdoors ceremony for Hollie and James at Birtsmorton Court near Malvern but didn’t hamper my 35mm film coverage of their wedding. If you are looking for sharp and grain free digital images please look at one of the many digital weddings on my blog, however if you love the imperfections of 35mm film this post is for you.

Birtsmorton Court

Birtsmorton Court is a real gem of a wedding venue even when it is pouring with rain and blowing a gale. A grade I listed fortified medieval moated house near Malvern, it is picture perfect! The moat adds a sense of romance  and is surrounded by beautiful grounds. Hollie and James had planned an outdoors wedding ceremony, as previously mentioned the weather had other ideas and I was glad to always have waterproofs in the boot of my car so I could venture outside for a few photographs. A brief break in the rain did allow a few photographs outside with Hollie and James but was quickly cut short.

Birtsmorton Court is one of very few wedding venues that is dog friendly, Hollie and James brought along their gorgeous dog for the day and he was very well behaved. I am informed a dog at the previous wedding took a liking to the moat and went for a swim.

Wedding shot on film

I was using both film and digital equally for this wedding but have opted to show the film images rather than swap between the two. On days like this with poor weather and dark conditions us film photographers really earn our keep, I had brought along a few rolls of the brand new Leica Monopan film to try out in my Leica cameras, the only issue is this is a 50iso film and even with my Leica 50mm F1 lens I was struggling to get shutter speeds much above 1/10th second, so after some photographs during the getting ready stage I switched to Ilford HP5 pushed to 800iso and 1600iso. Colour film was all Kodak Portra 800. I hand processed the films in my darkroom and scanned them.

Film gives a unique look to the images, I tend to aim for a different look to my work when using film as I adapt to the imperfections and especially the limitations with film speed, it is very easy with digital to crank up the iso but with film you are really limited to around 800iso with colour and 3200iso with black and white (anything higher the grain becomes far too intrusive). You can read more about my approach to analogue photography by clicking here