I always post finished projects but I never post all the failures or versions that didn't make the cut. I was very inspired by the Failure CV posted by a Princeton professor and thought it would be fun to share a failure!
Now we can do almost anything with our phones. Technology has automated almost every process for us. Want to be a photographer? Well, there is an ap for that. I thought I was being very authentic by buying a lomography camera and well... it was a creative disaster. This is a fun little story about the creative failure that was my attempt at lomography.
Here is my limited edition Jack White Holga lomography camera. OooooOOOooo AhhhhhHHHhhhh!
I thought I would get a lomography camera because it was the camera that Instagram filters are based on. Even the old Instagram logo is an illustration of a lomo camera. These toy cameras are known for their weird glitches, imperfections, and quirks. I thought using one of these basic cameras would help me understand photography on a more fundamental level. I bought this camera for $100 with the best of intentions... 2 years later I finally used it... once....
I partially read the instructions, watched youtube tutorial videos for tips and tricks, and bought some film. The film was very expensive. One roll was $11.99 and the second more fancy roll was $13.99. And did I mention you only get 12-16 photos per roll? But to be authentic you have to pay for it right? I took the camera on a long weekend vacation and soon realized having to manually advance the film was an absolute pain. I thought I was advancing it correctly for 16 photos per roll but later found out I screwed that up. You also have to manually roll the end of the film and I exposed a bunch of shots by not doing that correctly either.
I took the finished rolls to get developed. It cost me $10.99 per roll and took 10 business days to develop due to them having to be shipped out. I was asked if I just wanted the film developed. I agreed. In my mind that meant I wouldn't be getting a digital disk of my photos. Well that is not what it meant. All they gave me was the developed negatives...
Great. Now what do I do with these?
Turns out to get my actual pictures I had to send these back to the lab that takes 10 days! Also, looking at my negatives, they had to ask for special care with my photos because I completely screwed them up and had overlapped ever single exposure!
You can see how these exposures are overlapped.
After another 10 days I got a disc of my photos back. I was charged another $35.99 and that is when I discovered my flippin' photos were not even in color!?!?! They were all black and white! So after $150+ and 2+ years I give you the not so amazing photos I took with my very legit lomo camera.
This triple exposure turned out gorgeous.
I really enjoy this one too.
This headstone is from 1875.
This is my favorite image I took.
This double exposure is really haunting.
I kinda love this one too.
The overlapping exposures are really quite interesting.
This one is so striking.
Many of the images I took are happy accidents. The overlapping created some great effects. Do I think this handful of photos was worth the $150+ investment? Absolutely not. But I did get some beautiful art out of it by accident. And I also have some of the most hipster authentic pictures of my cats ever!
This basically looks 100 years old.
Classic.