Hello!
I haven’t blogged in a couple weeks—I’ve been mostly posting one-offs to Instagram and sitting on a few rolls a film that have actual blog-worthy collections on them, one series in particular that I have been very much looking forward to seeing.
A few weeks ago, I took a walk through my city and shot an entire roll of closeup flowers. I rewound that roll, reloaded it (trying my best to wind to to the same start point without any markers), and then shot a roll of self-portraits in the park. The portraits themselves were a bit of an ordeal; my air cable release wasn’t firing reliably, and the needle inside it that pushes the shutter button wasn’t retracting after being fired, so when I advanced the film, it would immediately fire again. After each shot, I had to disconnect the cable release, manually push the needle back in, and reattach to my camera. When I first I arrived at the park, the cable release wasn’t firing at all, and I almost packed up and went home.
Glad I didn’t.
The below images are my first attempt at intentional double exposures (we’ve had a few happy accidents like the ones posted here). My friend Steven, the unofficial King of Double Exposures, gave me a few tips, the most important being to push your film a stop or two. He does it using aperture, but I did it by setting my camera ISO to 800 for 400 speed film. It took my brain a minute to understand why this is important, but the way it makes sense to me is to remember your film is a negative. When you take a picture, the light exposure is “taking away” material from the film strip that results in your image. If you push your film, it will underexpose it, leaving it a bit dark. Your second shot then “takes away” more of the film material, creating a more ideally exposed image.
Here is the full set of my floral self-portraits, including a few screw-ups that I just like aesthetically.
Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.