We spent a lovely day in Banff today and as I mentioned yesterday I took my Diana Mini along for the trip, all ready to go with a new roll of film.
I shot the whole thing over the course of our walks on the Cave and Basin trail and Bow Falls, and a couple last ones from the car on the way out of town, and a couple at the Canmore tourist centre.
I took the whole roll all in a day because I was anxious to see if I was getting it right this time. I had tried some double exposures on the camera previously, left the film sitting there in the camera for at least two years, and developed it yesterday to see what was what. This is what came back from the developer…
And I assure you, that’s the very, very, stands out from the rest best of what I got back. So I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get something decent out of my little camera, but I read this super useful article, re-set the settings on my camera (which were all wrong for trying double exposure) and tried to proceed with confidence. But when I went to pick up the developed film and disc late this evening I also tried not to get my hopes too high up.
But…
I pulled out the film strip and there were definitely proper, non-ghost-beige images on it…
And unlike last time when my film came out as a whole lotta nothing this time they included a contact sheet and things were looking really really really promising and…
I don’t mean to be totally insufferable but when I saw the first one with the three layers of mountains and the eagle I drew and my breath and practically yelled “wow!” I am so incredibly happy with these! I think the mountain one that really blew me away might be an accidental quadruple exposure? There are a lot of strange things going on in the film that I don’t totally understand, and as a result, this is a good roll of film for me to learn from.
First, I definitely had the camera set to take square photos so I don’t know why they came out rectangular, so there’s something going on there… maybe something mechanical with the camera. If I can’t take square photos I’m fine with that, but I do want to see if I have that flexibility or not. There are also sometimes random strips where the double exposure doesn’t seem to have double exposed, so part the image is doubled and part isn’t. This is cool but I also don’t know why it happens, and it’d be a neat thing to be able to do deliberately or avoid deliberately, if possible. Finally, when shooting I would take a photo, not touch the dial, then take another, then wind, so the film should be nice and perfectly clipped into distinct images, right? But the images seem to overlap in weird ways sometimes, with one of the images slimmer than the other or spilling over onto the next image. It’s all just… weird. Very very cool, but weird. So I’m not sure if I can learn to make crisper cuts between photos but we shall see.
Honestly though I’m just over the moon about these! Film reminds me so much of my dad—the fascinating cupboard in the buffet that had his camera gear in it, the rolls of film in the part of the fridge where you’re supposed to keep butter, the whole sound and process of him preparing to and taking photos. It also reminds me of my Aunt taking photos when I was younger and it feels really great to get a chance to work with this medium, and to discuss it with my Aunt as we got ready to go out for our walk. Heck it reminds me of being little and shooting film too… I was so excited to get the roll of film I shot of my stuffed bunny dressed up riding in my sister’s grey Barbie car. The camera was also a gift from Julya, and I remember the first photos I took with it on a warm Winnipeg evening when she first gave it to me. It just makes me super happy to be using this little film camera, and it makes me even more happy that I made some images that look sort of the way I was hoping they would… probably even cooler, actually.
Happy sigh.
I also tried to punch needle some felt tonight which was a resounding failure. I read about fabric choices for punch needle work and apparently felt is just not going to work. Will try some proper fabric meant for embroidery soon!
Happy sigh again.