Memories and Cross Processed Film

I am a bad photographer, waiting so long to develop my film. I always run out of money after buying the film. And then it piles up. Until I have a drawer of unprocessed rolls.

But I'm trying to work my way through it bit by bit. This is from a couple rolls that I cross processed. It was risky shooting in and around Paris with experimental photo processes, but I didn't want to take tourist photos, even if I had no clue what sort of image I would end up with. This was my 1st time trying cross processing so I really had no idea what to expect. I was told Fuji RXP would have an ethereal greenish haunting glow. And that Kodak E100VS would have super saturated colors.

Well, the Fuji RXP is awesome. It's kind of what a memory would look like, if it could be photographed. Fuzzy and kind of green. That's what you see above used to photograph Marie Antoinette's fake peasant village she used to play in with her friends. There are more pix over on flickr. It was very chilly an cloudy when I was there so there was no direct light. I generally hate photographing when there is no sun, I like waiting for the light to fall on a certain thing in a certain way and create images with alot of contrast. But I actually think the cloudy sky worked for me in these images, because everything came out a soft green. It has a very haunting quality. I don't know how sunlight would have affecting things, it may have given an entirely different feel to the photos. Maybe (when I have more money) I will shoot some more X-proccessed Fuji RXP.

The Kodak E100VS was not what I expected. It was very strange. I guess when I was told it would be very saturated, I pictured something like one gets pushing the exposure (or is it pulling, I always get the two confused.) But this came out looking like a child had played with all the filters in Photoshop. Here's an example (I did tone down the color a bit in Photoshop so it didn't hurt my eyes so much):



Many places where there was bright color just came out flat and two dimensional without much gradation. Plus it didn't help that many of the photos were blurry, no doubt a result of my inexperience with a Holga, and my tendency to be shy about taking photos of people on the street. I tend to rush and try to sneak photos unnoticed but that causes camera blur. I am much better at sitting with someone taking a few pictures as we chat. I think the difference is someone who gives me permission to shoot them and someone I have to sneak up on. I'll never be a good photographer of street scenes like I would love to be.

But for now, now that my latest art show is getting hung as I type this and I no longer have an imminent deadline for my painting, I think I will go back to photography for a bit. I need a change of pace.

Though it may not be for long because I already have my next show lined up for September. And I already have some paintings in the back of my head waiting to be brought into existence.