FILM PHOTOGRAPHY + NINOMIYA STUDIOS

A little backstory: my family is one of photographers. My great grandpa owned his own studio in LA pre WWII (hence Ninomiya Studios), and my grandpa worked as an Army Photographer. My dad studied communications and lived in Japan for 13 years, in which he purchased a lot of different cameras to document his life. One of those cameras became my first film camera, the Nikon FE2.

Yes, film has become a bit cliché these days as an aesthetic or trend. But for me, it’s been a creative outlet and release from the day to day of being a small business. Everyday, I’m running the gamut of being a photographer, doing things like planning shoots, going on shoots, documenting weddings, writing contracts, creating invoices, bookkeeping, editing films, editing photos, doing emails, social media, keeping up with DMs, organizing calls, researching locations, and all that fun stuff.

Film photography takes me away from that. I don’t know what the photo looks like until a few weeks later, I don’t get a second chance to capture a moment. It’s all instant, it’s all so in the moment. And that’s what I love about it so much. I take more bad photos than good ones, and even the bad ones remind me of the moment.

So here’s a collection of film photos I’ve taken over the last year.