Jonathan Canlas Part I: Carmencita meets FIND Berlin

Last February we teamed up with film photography master Jonathan Canlas in what was officially his final FIND workshop after 8 years of spreading his film knowledge around the world. For this final round up the format was a little different than what he’s been doing. Since it was his last time doing FIND and last time in Europe we wanted to reach as many people as possible and therefore did two one-day condensed FIND workshops. Also we as a lab gave a lecture on what we do and assistance throughout both workshops.
For us this was a dream come true, since we’re all fans of Jonathan and we also got to finally meet a lot of customers that have been with us almost from the beginning.
The internet has changed the world, and actually our business model wouldn’t even exist without it, but meeting clients face to face after all those emails and Wetranfers was amazing.
Same goes for Jonathan. Admiring a photographer’s work (whether online or on paper) is one thing, but actually hearing him give advice to other shooters and watch him direct couples while he is shooting? That’s somethin’ else!
Needless to say besides the ton of theory Jon and us taught there was a lot of shooting those days regardless of the freezing temperatures (Berlin in February, great idea hahaha!). Day 1 had four couples to shoot (it was a huge group!) and Day 2 had two. Everyone had a chance to shoot one of the couples and when Jonathan did we all watched, asked, learned and basically drooled at his master skills at directing!

Jonathan shot a ton of film before, during and after both workshops and we took good care of it at the lab. We really appreciate that having his own lab ( theFINDlab ) he trusted us to develop and scan his work. In a sense it was an easy task since his look is so defined and we know it well since we’ve been following him like forever. Also the way he (perfectly) exposes and his film stock choices pretty much dictate his look, but still it was a challenge and that we took with pride and determination.
For this “Part I” post we tried our best to come up with a “small” selection of the couples he shot during the 2 workshops and we threw in a few shots of the attendees (sorry we couldn’t fit you all in!).

These were shot with Portra 160VC pushed one stop, Portra 400UC pushed 2 stops and Portra 160 pushed 2stops and … a Pentax 645nii with a 75mm f2,8 lens! Yep, you heard it right, not Contax 645 but Pentax 645nii. So yeah, add to the mix the fact that Jonathan was trying out a new camera for this whole thing, and that’s pretty epic. Wanna know Jon’s verdict on the Pentax 645nii? Well, let’s just say the images talk for themselves 😉

Thank you so much Jon and everyone who attended for such great times!

PS: Watch out for Part II coming soon 😉