Why I keep shooting Portra 400
A love letter to a film stock, and a very practical case for one set of grain across an entire body of work.
— Plate 01, Marais, Paris. Shot on Kodak Portra 400.
There's a story I tell about Portra 400 that's not exactly true but isn't exactly a lie either. The story is that I shoot it because of a wedding I photographed in 2019, where the bride wore cream and the groom wore tobacco-brown linen and the only film I had in the bag was Portra.
“I don't shoot Portra because it's the best film. I shoot it because shooting one stock makes the work look like one body of work.”
The truer version is that I'd been frustrated for years that my work didn't feel like one thing. Editorial in one stock, weddings in another, personal projects in a third. Portra didn't fix the work but it did fix that.
The practical case
It's forgiving. It pulls beautifully. It pushes acceptably. Skin tones don't need correction. Mixed lighting — tungsten and daylight in the same frame — looks intentional rather than broken.
Photographer based between Lisbon and Berlin. New essays land roughly once a month.