Film v Digital - Different yet similar

I get asked about the merits of digital photography regularly and the assumption is always that digital must have changed my job beyond recognition. I have certainly had to learn a whole new skill set since my days shooting film. Funny then that we appear to be in the midst of an analogue revival. Lomo and Diana film cameras are suddenly gaining a cult following, special edition vinyl LP's are back and digital emulations of film are everywhere right now. I dabble in this a bit and enjoy producing the odd wedding shot that has a look of Fuji Velvia, a great slide film that had lovely warm saturated colour. Not very realistic but sometimes that's just what you want. Below is a shot fiddled with using a light-leak texture. One £1300 Canon lens made to look like I used a broken Kodak Instamatic!

A few months a go I was approached by Marc Aspland, a good friend and Staff Sports Photographer of The Times (more of him coming soon) to work on some pictures from the riots. Marc noticed how similar some of the shots were to wartime Blitz shots of London. My job was to make the modern digital shots look like hand printed images from film. The resulting spread is reproduced below courtesy of The Times and explains how I did it. I miss the hand printing a little but don't miss the stained clothing, stink of fix and brown finger nails! "Nothing's changed" I hear you say.

 ©The Times. Reproduced with permission