Emma Town // San Antonio, TX

With the rare exception of perhaps 3 or 4 out of 210+ photoshoots, the majority of this project has been photographed with Ilford HP5+ film. HP5+ was a choice because I was familiar with it, and it has forgiving dynamic range. If I overexpose too much, I can bring it down when printing. If I underexpose, I can still salvage a bit of the image, albeit with much more contrast than I usually care for. 

With a planned shoot next month (May 2022) at a specific building in Spain, I had the idea to try something different. You see, without giving away the location yet, this building is predominantly red in color. I had heard of an Ilford film that registers any red as a dark black. At $12 a roll, this was almost twice the cost of my normal HP5+ rolls of film. Besides the cost, it would be unwise to travel across the world for a shoot at a specific location, and never have experimented with the film. 

This shoot with Emma was setup specifically with the intent of testing out this film in front of a red building in San Antonio, the main downtown campus, aka ‘The Red Enchilada’. With one film back loaded with HP5+, and the second back loaded with Ortho+ (don’t ask me what the + is for, I have no idea, on either film), we set out to make some interesting images. 

I metered Ortho+, which is normally an 80 ISO film, at 50 ISO, and the normal HP5+ was metered at 200 ISO, overexposing each almost one stop, and giving the film a bit more density. For comparison, here’s a shot of the HP5+ frame. 

Ortho+ is quite contrasty, giving the images an almost “old style photography” look. Its lack of red sensitivity means that reds and oranges in the frame are rendered darker with stronger contrast than standard panchromatic film. 

I think I will be sticking with HP5+. Ortho+ is too contrasty for me, even though occasionally it can be fun to play with something different. Next up? Shooting with red filters to render blue as darker tones! 

February 28, 2022