If you hang around film photography circles long enough, you are going to hear a lot about "pushing" film. People love talking about rating Kodak Tri-X at 1600 for gritty street photography, or pushing Portra 800 to 3200 to shoot an indie show in a dark basement. Pushing is edgy. It adds grain, increases contrast, and makes everything look dramatic.

But what if you want the exact opposite? What if you are standing in a massive open valley, the sun is high, and you want your final image to have those dreamy, washed-out, pastel tones? You want the greens to be creamy, the shadows to be full of detail, and the bright clouds to be soft instead of a blown-out mess of pure white.

That is where "pulling" film comes into play. It is the quieter, slightly misunderstood sibling of pushing, and it is the absolute best trick in the book for fine art landscape photographers. Today, I am going to walk you through exactly what pulling is, why it makes your landscapes look incredible, and how to actually do it out in the field.

What Does "Pulling" Film Actually Mean?

To understand pulling, we first have to agree on how standard film processing works. Every roll of film has a "box speed"—the ISO printed on the cardboard. If you shoot ISO 400 film, you tell your camera it is 400, and your lab develops it for an standard amount of time. Easy enough.

Pulling film is a deliberate two-step deviation from that standard. Taking away the technical jargon, it just means you are intentionally overexposing the film in the camera, and then under-developing it in the lab.

Let's say you load a roll of Kodak Portra 400 into your camera. If you want to pull it one stop (often written as Pull -1), you would set your camera's internal ISO dial to 200. This tricks your camera's light meter into thinking the film is less sensitive to light than it genuinely is. As a result, your camera will let in twice as much light, overexposing your roll by one stop.

If you stopped right there and developed the film normally, you would simply have overexposed film. It would look quite nice, actually—color negative film loves light. But for a true "pull," the magic happens during development. You drop the film off at your lab (or mix up your chemistry at home) and tell them to process it for a 200 ISO film instead of 400. Because the film sits in the developer chemicals for less time, it compensates for all that extra light you let in.

Why Less Contrast is a Secret Weapon

You might be wondering why anyone would go through this trouble. If you overexpose and then under-develop, don't they just cancel each other out? Not exactly. They do balance the overall exposure, but the real change happens to the contrast.

When you shoot landscapes, contrast is often your biggest enemy. Imagine a mountain scene in the middle of the afternoon. The sky is incredibly bright, but the heavy pine trees in the foreground drop deep, dark shadows. Film has a decent dynamic range, but if you expose for the trees to see the bark details, the sky becomes pure white. If you expose for the sky to keep the clouds intact, the trees turn into a massive black blob.

Here is why pulling is a superpower for this exact situation.

When you overexpose the shot (by rating your ISO lower), you are flooding those dark shadow areas with precious light, grabbing every bit of detail out of the trees and rocks. Then, when you intentionally under-develop the film, you are heavily restricting how dense the highlights can get on the negative. The development time is cut short before the bright sky has a chance to turn into an unprintable, un-scannable mess.

The result is a flattened, compressed dynamic range. Your shadows are lifted and full of information. Your highlights are soft, restrained, and retain all their gentle texture. Overall contrast drops significantly, and color saturation usually mellows out a bit. Your bold, harsh landscape suddenly looks like a moody, pastel fine art print.

How to Pull Your Film in the Field

Actually pulling film is incredibly straightforward once you know the steps. Here is how I usually handle it when I am out shooting.

• Step One: Meter for your shadows. If I want maximum information in the darker parts of my landscape, I cannot rely on a generic matrix meter that includes the blazing hot sky. I like to get a reading from the shadows in the grass or trees.
• Step Two: Adjust your ISO. Let's say I am shooting Ilford HP5, which is normally 400 ISO. I want to pull it two stops for super low contrast. I will set my light meter (or my camera's ISO dial) to 100.
• Step Three: Shoot the whole roll at that speed. You cannot pull half a roll of film. Development time applies to the entire roll simultaneously. If you commit to pulling, you need to shoot all 36 frames at that lower ISO rating.
• Step Four: Mark the canister. The second that roll comes out of the camera, grab a Sharpie and write "PULL to 100" or "Pull -2" right on the side. Do not trust your memory. You will forget by the time you get to the lab.

The Best Film Stocks for Pulling

Not all films respond identically to being pulled. Color positive (slide) film, for instance, is notoriously fussy. Because slide film has a very narrow dynamic range anyway, trying to pull it often results in muddy, weird color shifts. Stick to negative film.

For black and white landscapes, Ilford HP5 Plus and Kodak Tri-X 400 are incredible candidates. If you pull HP5 two stops to ISO 100, the grain structure practically vanishes, leaving a buttery smooth image with endless shades of gray.

For color landscapes, Kodak Portra 400 is the undisputed king. When pulled to 200 or even 100, Portra's already soft colors become beautifully muted. The greens turn into these lovely, subtle sage tones, and the blues in the sky get a sleepy, hazy quality that screams "fine art photography." Kodak Gold 200 pulled to 100 is also a fun, budget-friendly experiment that yields unexpectedly soft and warm results.

Gear Check for Landscape Photography

If you are getting serious about controlling your highlight and shadow zones, precise metering is absolutely non-negotiable. Trying to guess exposures for pulled film using the Sunny 16 rule is risky, and the old light meter inside a vintage camera might be a bit too easily tricked by bright skies.

I highly recommend grabbing a dedicated external light meter if you do not have one already. It will allow you to take spot readings of your landscape shadows, ensuring you are giving the film the exact amount of extra light it needs before the pull process. You can browse through some reliable options here: check out vintage external light meters.

Also, shooting landscapes often means stopping down to f/8 or f/11 for corner-to-corner sharpness. A solid vintage manual lens is going to be your best friend out there. If you want to expand your kit to get those wide sweeping fields or tight mountain peaks, it is worth tracking down a beautifully crafted chunk of glass to pair with your setup. You can always search for high-quality manual focus lenses to find the right focal length for your creative vision.

Pulling film might sound a little technical the first time you try it, but the results are entirely worth the mental math. It forces you to slow down, look at the contrast in your scene, and make a purposeful decision about the mood you want to capture. Grab a roll of 400 speed film, rate it at 200, find a nice quiet landscape, and see how much softness you can pull out of the light.