Review: Accidentally Fell in Love with Harmon's Pheonix II.

Why do I shoot beauty? This is the question I ask myself over and over and over again. A snake eating its own tale, never satiated. And yet, I don’t think it can be said that I do shoot proverbial beauty. I shoot beautiful things. Beautiful makeup on beautiful people, etc, etc and evermore. But at the end of the day no-one is knocking my doors down to shoot branded campaigns. I’m not ‘clean’ enough, I’m too sexy. Seems I’m a little off-beat for that. And this showgirl photoshoot shot on Harmon’s new Pheonix II is a prime example of just that. 

Let’s get it out of the way. I am not getting paid to talk about this new film and there was no purpose for this shoot, except we wanted to do it. We wanted to drip drip drip Lauren in Rhinestone's, flaunt her in feather’s so high it looked like she might just fly away, and play with the essence of a showgirl for a day. And then take the pictures because as they say - it would last longer. 

I think everyone who follows my work knows, we work well together: Lauren (model) Gabby (makeup) Kelsey (hair) and I. There is a level of trust I have with each of them to create something they’re proud of while also sharing the communal vision. A meeting of the minds. And to be frank, they all just get it. 

And, like I said, there was no grand purpose for this shoot. This is not the brain bending French tickler of high-level art that at my best I aim to create. But I did make purpose within it. Because even if it’s not the most personal conceptual thing, I am always chasing knowledge and ways to push, experiment, document, and hopefully make something heart-breakingly beautiful. Feminine images that tell a story. Images seeking a truth buried in our collective unconscious. And the purpose I found within this shoot was to experiment with this fabulous new color film by Harmon called Pheonix II. 

I bought this film on a whim. I was at my local camera store (Woodward Camera) picking up HP5 because I’ve been blowing through that stuff with all my caffenol shooting (black and white film developed in coffee). But on this day, when I walked in, there was a cute little diorama of 35mm and 120 rolls of this new film at the very front. I grabbed the last roll of 35mm and at check out asked the guy, “what do you know about this film?” A question I often ask when I see a film I've never shot and wonder what uncharted waters do I need to traverse. He srugged and said, “I just know it’s better than the original Phoenix.” Which, for the record - I don’t hate the original, It’s just very specific film. There at the counter we both tried to looking up examples of the film and all either of us got were pictures of a video game character. 

Side note: Whenever I look at example images of film I only ever see street photography or flowers, which is so far from what I do it’s exhausting. I don’t understand why no color film companies showcase portraiture in studio or lifestyle fashion or honestly even women in makeup. The only way I can really see if I like a film stock is if I test it myself. So I bought it. I knew I had this fun little collab with my favorite team and figured I’d shoot it and see what was what. 

And let me tell you, the highlights alone were so beautifully blown out they almost bleached my hair. But this process was not without some hiccups along the way. 

First, I exposed this film for 400 iso and its 200 iso. Which is absolutely my bad. I had been in that caffenol circuit for like a month. And I think the HP5 ISO was on auto pilot in my brain. That being said, I think besides two shots that are extremley underexposed, it worked out to my advantage (but wouldn’t I love to shoot another roll and test it out it similar conditions to spot the difference). 

Second, I develop all of my film myself unless it’s a wedding (can’t risk that shit) and loading this film on the reel was murder. It was wound backwards or something and so I had to load it on the reel upside down and cross my fingers the development wouldn’t be fu*$ked up because of it. ** Here I should mention that I have since shot another roll and it loaded like a normal roll of color film so maybe this roll was a first batch anomaly.

Third, when I scanned this film into my flat bed scanner it looked like garbage. Complete junk. As if I had no idea how to use studio lights or a film camera. I said internally, “thank goddess I took mostly digital shots.” I couldn’t believe this was what Harman had come out with. But one photo scan was staring me in the face and was so beautiful I thought, maybe its not the film, maybe it’s the scanner. 

This thought of course sent me down a huge scanner rabbit hole that has made me into a nerd of scanning software. I’ll save you all boring tediums of internet forums and YouTube videos circa 2013. Just know that if you’re like me and you develop at home and use a flatbed scanner, download Silverfast. If you have an Epson it comes free, and if you didn’t download it when you bought your scanner, just call them. They have a real life voicemail, that a real life human checks, and a real life woman name Candy will call you back and walk you through the process. I cannot tell you how much Silverfast has upped my scanning game and it’s so much faster than the Epson software, too.

Notes straight from Harman’s website on scanning: 

Use full autoexposure and auto colour.

Alternatively, we can recommend scanning as reversal (slide) film and inverting in software such as Negative lab pro or Adobe photoshop. This will generally achieve the best results possible and give maximum control.

In my opinion don’t do this. Just download Silverfast.

Of course after I scanned I had to clean up the dust in photoshop but I didn't mess with the colors. 

Overall takeaways of Pheonix 2: 

-I’m obsessed with the blown out warm tone highlights and will reach for this film just because of that. 

-Amazing studio film for rich tones with a lot of depth.

-This film can have a nostalgically haunting, almost sad mood.

-And you can accidentally underexpose it for added vibes.

Now that I know this film blows out highlights in studio under strobe lighting, I wanna shoot the film again and create a concept designed for that effect. What would Phoenix II look like if I intentionally played in this world? and perhaps exposed fofr the proper iso? Would it do that again or was this a fluke of a first batch of film?