Polaroids + Large Format + 35mm

December 29, 2021

I have kinda been failing at this blog for the last couple of years (wonder if there’s…. something happening in the world that’s stifling creativity lately? Hmm…) so I figured might as well sneak in one last post into 2021. A brief shoot with Paloma on everything from tiny 35mm up to 4x5 and a couple of my earliest 8x10 portraits.

Definitely one of my favorites was almost one of the first photos of the day. Trying to get into the flow and just being goofy with posing hands and we landed on this funky pretzel arm pose and combined with the expired Polaroid 669 film, it really hits hard.

Then came the big boys. Recently borrowed a gorgeous 8x10 Chamonix large format camera from a friend and have been trying to put it to work while I have it. So a couple shots with Paloma seemed appropriate. Once I landed on a pose with 35mm, I grabbed the 8x10 and pulled off the shot below. Nothing like seeing a sheet of film bigger than your face in the darkroom.

And popped of another Polaroid of the red dress with some very bizarre Polaroid Type 79 film that came out beautifully. The colors do not disappoint. Experimented with the generally unusable negative as well. Had to cover myself with a BW shot which is at the top of the post which I really love as well.

Grabbed one last shot in the red dress with my new Lomography LomoGraflok back for large format cameras. Nice to shoot a cheaper instant film like Instax in a good camera.

Then switched up the outfit a bit and added some lace to the mix.

And again, loving the back shot, played with a variation of that for the second 8x10 shot and after messing around with the hair and buttons a bit, landed on something I loved.

Figured we could move from the studio setup and shoot around my living room with my 1940s large format camera and more Polaroids/35mm.

A few last Polaroids and look changes before the end of the shoot.

Yet one of my other favorites from the shoot was the last. A messy hair shot that came out like someone living in a foggy dream. One on expired Type 59 film (my favorite) and a test on the Lomo back.

A good shoot to cap off my 2021 year. Always shooting. Always improving. Always experimenting.

And shout out to Paloma of Crawford Models who killed it on this shoot and not only put up with the weird cameras but was itching to get her 35mm camera back in action in 2022.

Cameras used:

Chamonix 8x10 with 240mm f5.6 // Arista 400 BW 8x10 film

Speed Graphic with Zeiss Tessar 165mm f3.5 and Fujinon 210mm f5.6 // Arista 400 BW 4x5 film / LomoGraflok with Instax Wide / Expired Polaroid Type 59/79

Graflex Super D with Zeiss Tessar 150mm f3.5 // Arista 400 BW 4x5 film / Expired Polaroid 669

Polaroid 195 // Polaroid 669

Nikon S2 // Arista 400 BW 35mm film

**Rosario Dawson on expired Polaroid 669 film**

NYFW SS2022 on Large Format Film // 4x5 + Polaroid

September 28, 2021

Been a little while since I’ve written here but that definitely doesn’t mean I haven’t been shooting. I’ve been burning through film like mad! I just happened to get back a newly modified antique (or vintage should I say) large format camera the week of New York Fashion Week so figured it was a good opportunity to test it out!

A little more background on the camera (or skip this for the cool photos!)... it is a late 1940s Graflex Super D 3x4 large format SLR camera. Not your average SLR as it’s about 10x as big and with film to match and you look down to focus it. A great guy and amazing photographer, Jonathan Canlas, who runs The FIND Lab in Utah gave it to me when I briefly stopped by his studio space last fall on a roadtrip and chatted all things film. He said it was just collecting dust on his shelf and he felt like I’d put it to good use and I’d wager he was right! Unfortunately, it uses a rare film size and is hard to find, so I sent it to Graham at Graflex Parts who specializes in repairing these in order to use more readily available 4x5 film and allows me to shoot my favorite Polaroid peel-apart film! Anyways, onto the photos! Be sure to click them for the full screen viewing!

So met up with my guy, Naeem, who is a fellow film shooter and hit Spring Studios in SoHo which generally serves as the hub for New York Fashion Week and is always a good spot for street style photos as people come and go to the runway shows. The large format camera definitely attracted quite a lot of looks from the people attending the shows as well as the other photographers shooting. If you’re curious to see some of the BTS of me shooting, there’s a story highlight on my instagram of NYFW that shows me using it, peeling some Polaroids and developing the negatives in my “darkroom” aka bathroom. Jostling for people’s attention and to tell them this would take a minute wasn’t always easy but the results speak for themselves. I only took one shot of each person so had to make it count! No digital burst mode on this thing. The shots above are a few of my favorite portraits.

But as far as outfits go… lots of patterns throughout the weekend which personally I’m a huge fan of.

And the guys were bringing the vibes as well.

Definitely a highlight was unexpectedly seeing Rosario Dawson and getting a couple shots of her in a stunning, patterned dress from Studio 189 and shot my first Polaroid of NYFW with her. Luckily it came out fantastic!

Also spotted my friend and model, Sarah Jane Nader, and her sister, Brooks Nader, and snagged a couple portraits as they ran in and out of the building.

And of course, shot some Polaroids with the camera as well. All on expired Polaroid 669 film from around 2006. The peels always get crazy reactions which are hilarious but I love hearing the reactions each time. Rosario actually thanked the “Graflex” in her video.

Here’s a few other random shots from the weekend of various people I managed to stop for a portrait.

Ending with a couple portraits of Naeem and my wife, Halla, who both were servin for the NYFW weekend! And a portrait Naeem took of me looking disheveled holding the camera and my FW fit on his medium format Yashica 124G TLR camera.

Demi Ramos - Polaroid 59 expired 4x5 film- 01.jpg

"How to Wear a Jean Jacket" with Demi Ramos // Super 8 + Polaroids + 35mm

May 30, 2020

Before the pandemic really locked down NYC, I was shooting portraits as a creative outlet and mixing various cameras and formats. I chatted with Demi who was playing a concert with another musician I’d worked with and we met up for a quick shoot back in February.

I shot just a bit of expired Super 8 film that day and edited it down into a little fashion film featuring a taste of Demi’s personality while rocking a vintage jean jacket of mine.

Also shot some large format, Polaroids and 35mm and played around with putting together a wardrobe of sorts, which led to this retro set. I didn’t get a chance to get most of this film processed before the quarantine so I finally figured out how to process it at home myself and loved the results!

When all this dust settles in NYC, I’ll definitely hit up one of her shows because I know Demi goes hard!

Demi 35mm contact sheet fujifilm - 10.jpg

Jazz Age Lawn Party - West Side Story - Instax

Jazz Age Lawn Party 2019 // Super 8 + 16mm + Polaroids

September 3, 2019

Back at it again with this year’s trip to the marvelous Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor’s Island in New York City. For those unaware, the Jazz Age Lawn Party is a yearly event taking place on a weekend in both in June and August where you travel out to the really beautiful island off the southern tip of Manhattan and have a day filled with jazz, champagne and dancing. Everyone dresses up in their finest 1920’s threads (some of it is genuine vintage clothing from the time period!) and enjoy a day relaxing.

I always go with the amazing Penumbra Foundation’s tintype booth they run every year. They shoot actual tintypes on large format 4x5 and 5x7 cameras. I document their booth as well as the event on Super 8 and this year I added some 16mm into the mix as well. The Super 8 was B&W Tri-X self-processed at MONO NO AWARE, a cinema arts non-profit I work with in Brooklyn, and the 16mm was color negative shot on a Bolex H16 and processed/scanned at the new Kodak NYC lab! You can see some of the footage from the day below!

A fun little snippet in there is when part of the cast of the upcoming Broadway show and Steven Spielberg directed film adaptation of West Side Story. Probably around 8 of the cast members were at the event just enjoying the day and couldn’t help but get a tintype of the crew to immortalize the day. They were a lot of fun and really loved their tintype. I later caught a portrait of two of them on some instant film which is featured at the top of this post.

Aside from documenting on motion film, I always can’t resist bringing a few still cameras to take some portraits because the outfits are always incredible. I brought along a Polaroid 110B with some Instax Wide film as well as a modified Instax Wide 300. Bringing along cameras that were at least closer to the correct time period (albeit still from the 50s technically) is a treat because they always get a lot of looks and questions as I walk around with them.

Also, while helping out the Penumbra Foundation with their booth, the tintype studio manager, Jolene Lupo, and I devised a very McGyver’d way to shoot a “mug shot” type double exposure on a single plate. Took a lot of ingenuity and several extra hands but the results were exactly as we’d hope for! This is the flipped scan since with a tintype, everything comes out inverted.

In the end, it was a hot but fun weekend to test out lots of different cameras and chat with some really inspiring artists working on their craft. And be sure to check out the previous years I’ve gone: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.

Cameras used:

Super 8mm and Polaroid work featured on

Instagram