How can I get a similar look to Cece Alana’s film photography?

1. It's all about light. If you want your photos to look like hers, find light like what she shoots under. Keep in mind that just because it's outdoors in bright sunlight does not mean she's not using flashes/modifiers or reflectors to shape the light the way she wants.

2. If she's shooting film, use the same film product. Color films can vary greatly from emulsion to emulsion. Even one batch to another of the same film product will vary slightly, so test strips should be exposed and developed when starting with fresh film from a different batch. For full control, use your own darkroom to develop your film and make prints. Sending film to a lab can introduce a great variability in the way it is developed.

3. It's all about the light. If you want your photos to look like hers, find and/or create light like what she shoots under.

4. Use subjects that wear similar colors and styles of clothing in locations that have similar looks. A white sand beach will give a different look than a brown sand beach, for instance. Different types of vegetation or differently colored rocks will also affect the look of photos. Not only because they appear in the photo, but also because they will reflect similar light differently. Especially with beach photos, the color of the sand and water can affect the color of the light on the subject. The same is true when shooting a subject standing on lush green carpet of grass. The reflected sunlight from the grass will influence the subject's skin tones, especially those parts closer to the grass.

5. It's all about light. If you want your photos to look like hers, find and/or create light like what she shoots under.

6. Use lenses with similar focal lengths shot from similar subject distances at similar apertures. There are plenty of very good lenses out there for plenty of different film camera mounts. There are also plenty of less than great lenses. Some weren't even very good when new, but most were. With most film cameras and the mounts they use, in 2025 it usually comes down to the individual condition of used lenses that can be decades old. You could have two lenses of the same exact model and one be pristine with good optical alignment and the other so out of alignment it can't even focus properly. The only way to evaluate used lenses is to shoot with them.

7. It's all about the light. If you want your photos to look like hers, find and/or create light like what she shoots under.

8. With film, the camera doesn't matter as much as the film does. Digital is different because the sensor that is an embedded part of the camera is more or less the equivalent of film. On the other hand saving raw files with digital allows the equivalent of changing what type of film one uses after the fact. As many times as desired. Without ever changing the original raw file.¹

9. It's all about light. If you want your photos to look like hers, find and/or create light like what she shoots under.

10. It's all about the light. If you want your photos to look like hers, find and/or create light like what she shoots under.

¹ There's incredible flexibility with creating a "look" using digital cameras. You have the equivalent capability of creating a near infinite number of custom emulsions, not only for each photo, but for each of several different areas on the same photo! The emulsion of a film "bakes in" a lot of that based on the chemical properties of each layer of the emulsion. Even if scanned in very high quality and then digitally edited, there's a lot less flexibility with film compared to working with raw digital files. As long as the camera is capable of the exposure times you need and can shoot as many frames per second (film camera can have manual film advance or motorized film advance, sometimes at great increase in size and weight with external motor drives) as one needs, it's good enough. If you plan on using it heavily for many years, durability can become a consideration, but most film photographers in 2025 shoot discriminately and don't use film for use cases that demand thousands of frames per shoot (i.e. sports events).