I've personally been taking photos for 15 years. I started shooting friends and parties on a 35mm point and shoot, and since have ended up chasing my curiosities shooting all sorts of styles and subjects on all sorts of cameras. A big chapter within that 15 years was starting a film lab in 2020 and then having a particularly unique intimacy with the in's and out's of film in that time.
A lot has happened within the world of photography in that time. 15 years ago Instagram was just getting started - still a few years away from becoming a ubiquitous platform for photographers. Film was truly in a lull, as digital cameras had been creeping further and further into the hands of hobbyists and professionals in the preceding decade, and digital cameras themselves were still navigating affordability and usability - the first model of the Fujifilm X100 was released in 2010, and the Canon 5D MKII released in 2008.
Film photography never strayed too far from a niche of photographers who valued its subtleties and nuances against the tides of Flickr-era digital photography trends. I, unfortunately, first came to see the wonders and simplicity of film while discovering Terry Richardson, who famously started turning up to shoots with supermodels with his trusty Yashica T4. I took note of the camera, and in the meantime, bought an Olympus MJU II, the 'cheap' alternative to the legacy point and shoots, long before they became cult classics themselves.
That same camera cropped up once more not long after when I discovered the work of Cody Cobb and Randy P Martin - both American photographers capturing nature and wildlife on their tiny 35mm point and shoots. It seems it could capture more than just supermodels.
I got my hands on my own Yashica T4 as I started travelling more and taking photography more seriously, and in the few years after, ended up cycling through plenty of cameras - a Fujifilm X100, a Ricoh GR1, a Canon 6D, a Yashica T5, a Canon EOS 300, an Olympus Pen EE, a Mamiya 645 and a few other cheap and cheerful film cameras too.
I luckily caught the early wave of Instagram really finding its feet as a platform photographers took seriously, eventually becoming the dominant platform for image sharing. This was before posting videos was a feature, before carousels, and at a time where a defining early trend was photographers proudly sharing their 'iPhone only' chops, typically editing in VSCO.
It was around this time I discovered the work of Henrik Purienne and quickly bought his first photo book "Purienne." I lost it at some point, and recently discovered copies go for around $3000 on Amazon. Shame!
Purienne championed a style I hadn't seen much of before. All his photos were drenched in a nostalgic style - sun-kissed, vintage, well curated and warm, they felt like something you'd see in an old Pirelli calendar more than something you'd see on Instagram.
I'm sure there were other big names pushing a similar aesthetic but at least in my experience, I couldn't find any more prominent than Purienne, and film definitely seemed front and centre of his aesthetic. I also don't want to overstate his contributions, there's obviously leagues of photographers before him shooting in similar ways - you only have to flick through any 70's / 80's editorial magazines and you'll find the traces everywhere, but in 2011/2012, this aesthetic strongly stood out against the heavily processed, overly clean and 'technically' perfect digital photography that was commonplace for a lot of big name photographers on Instagram at the time.
I bring this particular example up because nowadays, the 70's sun-drenched 'film' look is absolutely everywhere - almost feeling like a rite of passage for any film photographer shooting models with a film camera, a roll of Portra and a 24-80mm lens
I've seen plenty of different trends and styles come and go in these past 15 years, and can't help but feel that the tight and formulated 'recipe' of this particular way of shooting will run its course and go out of fashion at some point as more and more people lock into how to construct images like these, and I wonder what might come next. I'll often see a photo and think it's symptomatic of the next era of trends and styles.
Especially prominent during the Olympics last year was the push and exposure of sports photographers, Sporarts did a great job platforming a lot of extraordinary work during that time. I noticed a few reoccurring patterns and themes with the photos that resonated with me the most from this particular strand of photography - notably a huge trend toward experimentation and abstraction. Utilising motion blur, using unique focal lengths to distort and bend images, processing photos in ways that enhanced the idiosyncrasies; these photos often felt like they were pushing the limits of what a sports photograph could be.
I started to notice trends like this occurring in portraiture and editorial spaces too - rich, almost cartoonish, post processing and exaggeration from the likes Jack Bridgland, and William Arcand,
It feels as though a lot of these photographers are pushing the advantages of using a digital camera - leveraging the ability to easily and affordably experiment, abstract and explore the potential of their images, while simultaneously make use of texture, grain and grit. Photographers aren't the only ones finding ways to bring texture into their digital workflows either, designers are frequently exploring the same space as trends seem to run parallel for a while.
I mulled all this over as I developed Grainmaker over the past few years. Initially I wanted to create something that could mimic what film can do so well, but as I worked away on that goal, I also started to realise that perhaps that was the baseline, and that the real joy of folding analogue variables into a digital workflow was to push those variables to their limits. To shoot in unexpected ways that are difficult to achieve with film cameras, and then embellish them with grain, light leaks, borders etc etc.
So, as it stands, Grainmaker in its first iteration exists. A set of analogue tools for digital photographs. I've developed something that hopefully leads itself to experimentation and play; perhaps pushing the limits of what you can do with it, and all the while I'll continue to take photos too, and try my best to keep an eye on where photography has been and where it's going - and continue to add, grow and develop Grainmaker accordingly.
