double exposure – I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things)

shot, reshot

August 23, 2018 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

A few weeks ago I wrote about a film photography “walking workshop” that I went to in Ohio. A week before that I’d shot a roll of film, mostly of the flowering plants in a garden I like to frequent in west Michigan, plus some wildflowers and a few sunsets. I finished the final shots of the roll in my backyard of the flowering plants there, on the east side of Michigan, and then re-shot the roll at a car show and in Findlay, Ohio’s downtown during the workshop.

I just really, really like a lot of these. I used my trusty Minolta SRT-102 and Kodak ColorPlus 200 ISO film.

You can see a few more from this roll on my flickr album.

Lima, the final installment

June 26, 2017June 26, 2017 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

I shot 8 rolls of film in and not too far outside of Lima, Peru, last month when I spent a week with my daughter there. Last week I sent away the roll of film I managed to muck up several ways to be developed by people who know what to do with mucked up rolls. I mucked this up by:

Forgetting to set the correct ISO on my camera when loading the film.
Completely forgetting what kind of film I had in my camera.
Forgetting that the roll had 24 exposures and not 36.
Thinking that my camera was stuck when it wouldn’t advance past 24, and so rewinding it ~~a bit~~ a ton (what was I thinking?) before I realized I was probably shooting over stuff.
Don’t judge me. I was on vacation. Again, I blame the pisco.

So with all that I wondered what I was going to get. The film is Fuji Superia 400, which I kind of like, but since I shot it at 200 I asked the lab to pull it one stop. The colors on the single-exposed shots are somewhat flat, but I like them. The multiple exposed stuff looks colorful but kind of washed out, too–but, you know, multiple exposures and all. I wish I could say I planned some of these images since I like how they turned out so much, but alas, no such thing. And, these are the lab’s scans. I look forward to scanning them in other ways and putting different frames together. And now I know I want to double-shoot a roll of film. Totally on purpose, though.

This roll was partly from a tour stop at the Hacienda San Jose in Chincha, which was a brief stop on our way to Paracas.

LDC_20170626_53900002 — yard at Hacienda San Jose in Chincha, Peru

LDC_20170626_53900007 — old garden wall, Hacienda San Jose

LDC_20170626_53900011 — flowers and porch arches

LDC_20170626_53900010 — flowers in hacienda yard

LDC_20170626_53900014 — hacienda garden wall in Chincha, plus boats and beach in Paracas

LDC_20170626_53900013 — hacienda chapel stairs and Paracas boat and beach

LDC_20170626_53900015 — hacienda chapel and Paracas boats

LDC_20170626_53900023 — Paracas beach and boats at sunset, town, and hibiscus flower

LDC_20170626_53900022 — Paracas wanderings

LDC_20170626_53900019 — Paracas boats and harbor

LDC_20170626_53900018 — Paracas, evening sunset and morning harbor

I love how some of the multiple exposed shots end up looking like I ran a roll through a half frame camera and then shot it again through a normal SLR (which gives me an idea…).

Love letters to the city

January 11, 2017 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

ldc_20170110_04690003 — One Woodward Ave., Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Ektar 100

Oh, Detroit.

You’re not what you were. You won’t be the same tomorrow, either. You had a heyday, you declined, then a recession. Today, a resurgence. You are loved and loathed, fought over, talked about, dismissed, underestimated, maligned, deified, abandoned, thriving. Through it all, you stand tall. You’ve got chops. You are what we make of you, but you have your own heart and our stories don’t define you.

I didn’t appreciate you when I grew up in your suburbs. I left; you called me back. Today I honor you–your shape-shifting, your grit, your perseverance.

So nice, I like you twice.

I took these double exposures on a sunny and not-so-cold New Year’s Day. Seemed a perfect way to honor the old and ring in the new.

ldc_20170109_04690018 — Penobscot Bulding, Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Ektar 100

ldc_20170109_04690022 — Federal Building, Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Ektar 100

ldc_20170109_04690025 — Westin Book Cadillac, Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Ektar 100

ldc_20170109_04690024 — Book Tower, Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Ektar 100

User error

January 4, 2017 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Or, happy accidents.

I had trouble loading a roll of Ilford HP5 into my Pentax K1000 just about this time last year. I loaded and reloaded and remember reloading it again. I wasn’t sure the film was advancing correctly while I was shooting, and eventually I just stopped shooting, rewound the film and took it out.

And then I forgot about it for months, until I handed it to my son to develop at school. I was right… it hadn’t advanced correctly at all. I forgot about the negatives until I was clearing out a bit of junk in my office a few days ago and almost threw out the film canister that contained the negatives.

I’m still working on figuring out the best settings for my scanner, but I think the resulting accidental double, triple, and maybe more exposures are at least interesting.