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There are plenty of things I could tell you about this image but what I am going to relate tonight is only going to involve the mistake I made.
One of the risks to habits is that you can come to rely on them overly much. A case in point would be that by an unofficial rule I generally keep my Hasselblad backs loaded with 400 ISO film, one back for color and the other for b&w. When I do load a different speed film in one of my backs I try to make a note because I am so used to 400 speed film in them that I have mis-exposed film before because of mistaken assumption.
Before this latest trip up to the Olympic Peninsula I had been working a lot and photographing only a little. As such by the time I got up there my black and white back was halfway through a roll of film I could not remember loading and so I could not remember which film was in it. Normally no note would mean 400 speed but something in my brain was tickling away that this was not true, that I had loaded something out of the ordinary in terms of film speed in this back.
So what are my options at this point with about six frames left to expose? Well I could trust my habits and expose at 400. I could attempt to second guess motives and backtrack through memory to deduce which film I might have loaded. I could meter somewhere in between. This latter is what I did. I figured the only other speed I would have loaded would have been 100 ISO film. So if I metered at 200 then I would only be wrong by a stop. If it was 100, I would be a stop under and considering that I normally overexpose by habit anyway, all would be ok. If it was 400, then I would be a stop over (or two with my usual overexposure). and film so readily forgives overexposure. Seriously, you can get away with three or four stops over and still produce reasonable images. Additionally I was going to be a bit less choosy with those six frames and try to blow through them quickly so I could confirm the film and if necessary backtrack to re-expose any images.
Thus I set off. Unfortunately it was sunny and clear and conducive to heavy ND shooting so "blowing through" half a roll takes on a slightly different meaning when shooting through 18 stops of neutral density. It took a few hours but I managed, wound the roll and unloaded it... to find a roll of Rollei RPX 25. Umm yeah. So metering for 200, maybe overexposing by design by a stop I was still going to be two stops under. That was a bit disappointing. Usually I defer to the decisions that past-Zeb makes. He often seems to think of things that present-Zeb appreciates. But this time I was wondering what in the heck that past me was thinking by loading a roll of 25 speed film in a camera that usually uses 400 speed and not putting a note on it to warn present-Zeb how to expose it properly. Sheesh.
So I had a bit of a sinking feeling in my stomach, figuring not even the forgiveness of film was going to save me this time. Luckily I was still on the same beach and did backtrack to re-expose the images I felt most strongly about. I debated having the roll pushed when I got back but then the first half had theoretically been exposed accurately and I couldn't really remember what was on it, so I didn't want to push process that stuff, so I just let it go, morbidly curious to see how thin the negs would be. Imagine my surprise when the stuff that came back turned out to be fairly usable... at least some of it. This image for example was metered somewhere around 100 to 200 ISO, which means I probably overexposed it to begin with due to the deep shadows in the frame. But that is ok, I wanted the cliffs to be black anyway.
So what to take from all this? I guess mostly that we all make mistakes. In fact you ought to find opportunities to make mistakes. They keep us sharp, they are opportunities to learn, they sometimes show us things we may not have discovered on our own, they remind us that we are fallible in our decision-making. And I tell you about this one in particular so that you know that I am not above making such silly errors. I tend to curate out most of the images I don't consider worth the time to post or your time to see. I edit down to the good stuff, which really means the stuff that I like for one reason and another. And I think with practice and by limiting how much I post I tend to only share the stuff that is noteworthy for good reasons. But that can easily lead to the mistaken perception that maybe I don't make the same mistakes you make. That I don't screw up my calculations or forget something simple and obvious. Well trust me, I do. And sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. On this case I got lucky, no thanks to my past self.
Hasselblad 500C
Rollei RPX 25
Captured in Toronto on the recent road trip with a Great Wall DF 120 camera and homemade lens. July 2005.
Kowa Six (medium Format). Fomapan 400.
Scanned with Canon 6D & Canon 24-105mm
Blenheim Beach, Jervis Bay NSW
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Japan, march 2011. Old pictures from a trip in Japan, more than five years ago.
I went on a long walking trip in the Kyoto area and along the Seto Inland Sea with my friend Charlie.
A great experience that shaped my passion for photography.
It was also at the same period that the earthquake and the tsunami of march 2011 hit Japan.
We were completely safe and far away from danger, but we had to go back to France earlier than expected.
Sometimes when I look at these quiet and peaceful photographs, it somehow feels special, in contrast with what happened to this country at that exact moment.
I made a book about it, available on Blurb :
Mamiya sekor 100mm
Film Expired
Agfapan caducada en 2004 revelada con Kodak D76, dilución 1+1 a 20º durante 13:30 minutos.
El saler.
On the ferry to Bainbridge Island. Taken with an old Yashica Mat 124 G. See more photos taken with this camera Here.
This is an accidental double exposure of me and my daughter taken with a Mamiya 6 folding camera. I shot the image of my daughter first and then she snapped the picture of me. I forgot to advance the camera to the next frame and created a double exposure. I don't think I could have done this on purpose nor could I probably recreate it if I tried. It is a cool image nonetheless and a treasure in my eyes. Mamiya 6 on Foma 400 film.