35mm film, Vinyl records and the Return to Analogue Weddings

The past decade has seen a quiet revolution in how we experience photography, music and memory. In a world shaped by convenience and instant gratification, more and more people are rediscovering the beauty of slowing down. It’s no surprise that vinyl records and 35mm film are right at the heart of this shift.

When I was a teenager, I used to spend hours in HMV on Whitefriargate in Hull. They had a listening station where you could slip on a pair of headphones and try a record before deciding whether to buy it. I can still picture myself standing there, record sleeve in hand, completely lost in the music. It wasn’t just about hearing a song, it was about the ritual, the feeling, the moment.

That same feeling returned to me years later with film photography. When I put a record on the turntable, I love the ritual of choosing the album, dropping the needle, and hearing that first warm crackle. It feels alive in a way streaming never quite can. Film photography is no different: loading the roll, setting the exposure, waiting for the photographs to come back. It slows you down, makes you intentional, and turns each frame into a once-only capture. With just 36 shots per roll, every press of the shutter matters.

This is why I’m drawn to analogue wedding photography. Colour film is timeless, and black-and-white has a cinematic quality that feels both nostalgic and fresh. More and more couples are beginning to crave that too. Many photographers are dusting off old cameras from the loft and capturing weddings on film alongside digital.

For me, the turning point was when browsing our wedding album that my Uncle John had captured on film, and then later finding an Olympus OM-1n tucked away in the loft.

My wedding album contains both prints and negatives, and the ability to hold them and to see the strips of film, gives it a magical quality.

Film offers something soulful. It’s slower, more deliberate, and the images feel like they could have been lifted straight from a family album, yet they’ll still look just as beautiful decades from now.

Of course, digital photography is sharp, fast, reliable, and remains the backbone of my professional work.

But film is beginning to re-emerge as a beautiful companion to digital. Prints from film become heirlooms, something you can hold, pass down, and treasure. Some things are simply meant to last.