I've made another victim
A good few months ago (it might be close to a year), while I walked into the film lab, I’ve seen a new face behind the counter. Me, being a big mouth and chatty, introduced myself and asked for her name. M was very shy and far too serious but, that was normal for the first encounter, and in time she became more relaxed and friendly. She also became curious about films and cameras which helped to lift the initial barriers.
I don’t remember exactly when but at some stage I dropped a film to be developed, and she asked: “Develop only and cut to 6, as usual?”. My answer was: “No, please don’t cut it. This one is a double exposure, and you can’t cut it.” “Okay”, she said with half a mouth and a bit confused. So I explained: “This film was exposed by a person in a different country, send to me undeveloped, I re-expose it and now is getting developed. Because we used different cameras, the alignment is not perfect so, please don’t cut it because there’s 90% chance that you will cut through the middle of frames instead of the end of them.”
“Oh, wow! That is very cool!” she said. “And because I don’t know what the person before me photographed, it is also very interesting; it is a surprise for both of us until the film is developed”, I added. Another wow. “That’s two wows’ in a row! So, my normal reaction is to ask you: do you want to do a film swap with me?” “Eeerrr … What? … With me? Er, I don’t know”. “Ah, here; it’s very simple: I have the roll of film, for you development is free, so it cost you nothing. Are you afraid? Why? I’m sacrificing the roll of film so you have nothing to lose. On top of this, how can you know if you are not experimenting? Ask B (her colleague), I did a swap with him, it is a great experiment.” “And what should I photograph?” she asked. “Whatever you want, it makes no difference but, I’ll give you something to think about: I will expose first and, I will try to create a background, and you can put whatever you want on top of it.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I made another victim of the creative exercise that is a film swap. The frames are far from being aligned (that is normal), M used an automatic camera, and she developed and scanned the film herself. I leave you with some of the results.
Perfectlight, The Dark Sith Lord of Film!
The victim group welcomes a new member! These are fun!