Sloppy Accidents

On a recent photo walk around the neighborhood with the family, I had loaded a roll of Fujifilm Superia X-Tra 400 I found sitting alone on one of my camera shelves. I was happy, although somewhat reluctant, to shoot some color in the Leica. Well, it turns out this was one of the notorious reusable rolls I keep laying around. They come about when I load a roll, snap a few shots, and decide I want something different in the camera. I’ll gingerly rewind the film, leaving the leader out, and hoping I remember what frame I was on. I have a system. I commit the information to memory where it is immediately lost. Sometimes I can see scratches or dents in the leader, cluing me in to it’s prior life as a test roll, but I usually forget.

Well, this one had nearly an entirely shot roll. I think I meant to develop it and forgot. It was a roll from a photo walk I took earlier this year with my cohorts in Downtown Memphis. It turns out, it was also now a roll of photos I shot on the photo walk.

I love double exposures so I took this as a chance to share some that I happened to like. I generally shoot planned double-exposures on one of the Holgas, never unplanned shots on the Leica. However, I might try more intentional double-exposures with the Leica. Nah. Film’s expensive. I can do this for free all day long on the Fujifilm X-T20.

Doubles are nice because you get to explore two intentional compositions the photographer was trying to make. In the image above, a blue door and an old truck with a stuffed monkey in the passenger seat. It’s magical when they’re planned, pseudo-artsy when they’re accidents.

The hand and watch is a mural over off Third and Jefferson. The other image is …trees ?

I just like this one because they were two shots next to each other on the roll. It is a neat geometrical anomaly for me.

The only point of this short article was to share an otherwise blown roll of film in a way that gives the shots a chance at being admired. I like these. They’re my little orphan photos.

I hope everybody finds some inspiration in these weird times (and weird images). Saturdays are Urban Sketch days, so check out Memphis Urban Sketchers group on Facebook. Grab your camera or phone and take a walk. If it looks interesting to you, photograph it, sketch it, stare at it. Don’t worry about what others think, just enjoy the process and the results for yourself. Grab Snapseed for your phone or any number of free / paid apps for your computer and spend some times making art. Record some of your own music or singing, share poetry. Don’t sit around in your house feeling like a prisoner.