Some months back, I had a few rolls of film developed, and added a few shots to the black and white film gallery.
Most of these photos were shot between April and July of 2017, I finally had the film developed in early August, and then immediately left the country for a couple weeks. When I returned, I didn’t really look back at these (had lots of travel photos to go through, and lots of every day life stuff to deal with).
Fast forward several months, I was recently reminded of these shots while digging back through LightRoom. Among the black and white photos was an out-of-place roll of color film... Turns out that, when I was preparing for a quick trip to Los Angeles in April, I accidentally loaded a roll of Kodak color film I thought I had thrown away. It was one of a handful of rolls I found in an old camera bag, and they were obviously expired. When I realized what I had done (which wasn’t until I ran out of film at 24 shots, thinking I had 36), I figured I’d get the roll developed anyway, just out of curiosity — I had gone through the trouble of shooting it, might as well see what I got.
Most of the photos were shit. The expired film was exceptionally grainy, the color was really washed out, and the overall effect was not just that of a Hipstamatic ‘70s camera filter, but truly that of long expired film. Bad.
Two images I made at The Getty Center, however, caught my eye: a photo of a hedge and rail (below; an image similar to one I made in digital black and white on the same trip), and a multiple exposure photo (above) that occurred at the very end of the roll, because the film had stopped advancing...though it took me a few snaps to notice because I accidentally loaded a 24 shot color roll instead of the 36 shot roll of TriX I had intended to use, and on top of that, the advance mechanism in the Minolta I was shooting with was breaking and about to fail completely. (It suffices to say that it's good habit to throw away old film, and not do 100 things at once while loading film into a failing camera.)
As far as happy accidents go, I like these two photos. I think the hedge shot has real texture to it, beyond just the extra graininess of the expired film, and a depth that grows the longer it's observed...if that makes any sense. I think the multiple exposure is cool, too — three (or maybe four?) shots from outdoor entry area at The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, all washed out in grainy yellow, yet still somehow pretty well separated.
These two shots kinda made the whole roll and experience worth it.
