It's Been a Little While

One of my favourite things about photography is coming home from a long shoot, grabbing my laptop, and scrolling through the images. Sometimes its 50 photos, sometimes it's 2000. It's so incredible to put so much time into planning, and shooting, and then to have the final images. 

Film is a little (a lot) different though. 35mm film only has 24 exposures so you really have make each one count. And you can't just go home and check out what you shot - you have to send the film away and wait and wait and wait and hope that you got a something good (and honestly, I usually forget what I shot by the time the film comes back!). 

Okay, it's been a little while, this is my first roll of 2018! In fact, the last roll I got developed was in August(!) SO, here are a few shots from Halifax and Cow Bay, Februsary '18.

Instant Experiments

WEEK 1

I'm working on this new project where I'm taking instant photos, and experimenting with them to get different looks. I've always been in love with instant photography and got my very own Polaroid camera a couple of years ago. Polaroid stoped making film a while ago, but Impossible Project picked up where Polaroid left off and is continuing to make film for the classic cameras. 

Unfortunately, the film can be a little pricey, and can't be bought locally, so instead, I used this FUJIFILM Instax 210 camera. There are only a few different settings, so it's super easy to use. 

The photos are wide, horizontal images, that, although they aren't square, still have the classic Polaroid look. 

Even though OutKast famously sings "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" in Hey Ya!, you're not actually supposed to shake instant photos, so, of course, I decided to shake it. I also rubbed my thumbs across the images which turned in these yellow spots.  

Kelsey, Michaella, Margie

This is a photo of my lovely school, NBCCD. To create the yellow in the corners of the image, all I did was roll the paper into a cylinder over and over again.  

Love my school <3 

This photo is my least favourite of this bunch. I was attempting to peel off the top layer of the film, but instead I cut through the photo completely. Where I had cut, ink spilled through. It started as just a pretty turquoise with a bit of yellow, but then there were blobs of the gross brown ink. Even though the front of the image doesn't look great, the back of the photo could have potential for a future attempt.  

I'm not trying this method again...

The back is slightly less disgusting looking

I tried running this photo of Kelsey under cold tap water, but could see no effects, so I held it over a heater. Slowly I could see pale pink appearing on the top of this image, where the most heat was hitting it. 

PINK PINK PINK

I was thinking that if a bit of heat could turn a photo pink, what might a lot of heat at once do? So, I turned on the kettle, boiled water, and took my photo. Immediately after the photo came out of the camera I poured the boiling water over it and saw that the photo was turning dark blue. 

Title Credit: Noel Chenier, Model: Scooter

I always thought how cool it is when people write on their Polaroids, but I was always too nervous about messing up the photos. But since this projects is all about experiments, I figure this is the time to try it out! I love the idea of attaching a word or phrase (or lyric) to each image! 

 Stay tuned for more instant photos coming soon!!

Why Can't We Be Friends?

Film has not been my friend lately.

Two weeks ago, I used bad chemicals to process my film so not a single image appeared on my roll. Ever since then, I've been extremely careful not to contaminate or over use the chemicals, but those weren't my problems this time.

I'm using my Holga camera to make double exposure images. Holgas are plastic medium format cameras that can create dreamlike images. They are super easy to use since they only have a few settings to choose from; there are two apertures: sunny and cloudy, and only one shutter speed.

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For my double exposures, I wanted to layer photos of flowers over portraits. I bought some colourful flowers and spent yesterday afternoon in the studio with my BFF/model/super talented potter Danika. I was so excited today to process my film and see the results.

Unfortunately, things didn't exactly go as planned.

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While attempting my multiple exposures, I accidentally overexposed my entire roll of film! All that was left was a spot that kind of looked like Nova Scotia. Not flowers. Not Danika. Nova Scotia.

Even though my film didn't work out, I did get a couple cool photos while experimenting with the multiple exposure feature on my DSLR. Here they are!

Expired Film (part ii)

It's official: I'm in LOVE with expired film!

I'm so so so happy with the results from my expired film project! Even though I'm technically finished with my short experiment, I'm absolutely going to continue shooting on expired film. The results I get with this film create truly one of a kind photos that just can't be replicated digitally. 

For my shoot with Mel, I continued experimenting with light leaks which created some incredible colours. Check out my favourite shots! 

Roll #1: expired 2006

How amazing are these light leaks! 

Roll #2: expired '90s

Model: Mel McMichael

Expired Film (feat. expired chemicals)

In my last post I said that one of my favourite things about film photography is its unpredictability. This time, however, it did not work in my favour.  

After braving the cold in three different locations, I excitedly started the development process. Because I couldn't wait to share the final results, I kept an Instagram Story to document my progress:

Here's how it looked:

Sadly, the chemicals I used to develop my film had gone bad, so not a single image came out. 

Stay tuned for Part ii (and some actual photos!)

Expired Film (part i)

I've been doing some experimenting lately with expired film, and I'm so excited to share my first round of results! I've been wanting to try shooting with expired film for a while now, so I jumped at the opportunity to use it for one of my class projects. 

One of my favourite things about film is its unpredictability; you don't know if you'll get the results you wanted until after you process and print your film. Adding the fact that this film is expired makes it that much more exciting. I was most curious to see if the film's age would alter the colours.

I had accidentally opened the back of my camera, so I thought I was going to lose a few of my photos; instead, the fraction of a second where my film was exposed added amazing light leaks!

 I was thrilled to see that my first attempt was a success!

Behind the scenes on developing day!