Coast Road: a pastel medium-format film AI photoshoot
Coast Road is a six-frame series on medium-format color film, overexposed into washed pastels, where an empty two-lane road, a guardrail and the sea draw clean lines around a small figure. Most frames keep the person tiny inside the landscape, a few step closer, and the sixth rests on the warm metal rail.
Art direction: Alex But
- Camera
- 6×7 medium format
- Lens
- 65 mm
- Aperture
- f/11
- Shutter
- 1/125 s
- Film
- ISO 400 color negative, +1.5 stops
- Time
- Hazy mid-morning
Best for
Six frames from this shoot
Five frames and one detail, made by haloshot from three phone photos of one person.
Frame 1 · Coast Road 
Frame 2 · Coast Road 
Frame 3 · Coast Road 
Frame 4 · Coast Road 
Frame 5 · Coast Road 
Detail · Coast Road
About the pastel overexposure look
A thin marine layer turns the mid-morning sun into soft, slightly directional light from behind one shoulder, and sea haze lifts the distance to milky blue. The 6×7 camera carries a 65 mm lens, close to 32 mm in 35 mm terms, at f/11, so focus runs from guardrail to horizon. ISO 400 negative gets about one and a half stops extra, which opens the shadows and softens every highlight.
Clothes, place and when to pick it
haloshot dresses women in a boxy dusty-pink twill jacket over a long ecru shirt with an ochre scarf, and men in the long ecru shirt alone with a dusty-pink scarf. Stone-gray wide trousers and a sage backpack go with both. Dry hills and a pale parked hatchback line the road. It makes a calm travel series, your own face readable in the closer frames.
How it works
Add three photos of yourself: face, half turn and full length. haloshot renders a free five-frame preview of Coast Road with your face. Pick the frames you like and keep them in 4:5 HD.
How to overexpose color film for pastel portraits
Pastels come from giving ISO 400 color negative about one and a half stops more light than metered, then developing normally. Hazy sun does the rest.
- Scout an empty two-lane coast road with a guardrail and lay-by; check whether filming needs a road permit.
- Set a 6×7 rangefinder's meter to ISO 125; with a 65 mm in thin haze that lands near f/11 at 1/125 s.
- Place the subject 8 to 25 m away for wide frames and 4 m for closer ones, horizon level.
- Ask the lab for normal development and a soft, low-contrast scan that keeps the extra density.
Post a lookout in a hi-vis vest and clear the asphalt for every car.
Set notes by Alex But, art director · Updated
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Shoot Coast Road with your face
Three photos in, five free preview frames out. Keep the best ones in HD.