(Un)happy Accidents
Zine № 1 Jan. 2020 0,00 €/$/ ₽
by paused_light
(Un)happy 1 @paused_light This workaccidents is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
“(Un)happy accidents” © 2020 by paused light This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Please have a look at the Creative Commons web site to find out more about this license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Published by the author: Valerie Kruglova Follow my work on: @paused_light
Hi, my name is Valerie. This is one of my favorite portraits made by my friend who used medium format camera Kiev-88 for the first time that day.
Intro Every photo in this zine is shot on film. Film photography is a hobby that takes up most of my free time. The world of analog photography attracts me with complex combination of fine arts, chemistry, physics and many other fields of knowledge I didn’t know existed before. I enjoy experimenting with different cameras and film processing methods. Every once in a while something goes wrong and I get accidents that are sometimes even better than the original idea.
Thank you for joining me in looking back at all my failings over the past year. I hope you enjoy and get courage to experiment by looking at my experience. .
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Power station at night and a dog guarding a bike in the morning. Nikon FM2+Canon 300v
Shifting film between cameras One of the first stupid things I did on my analog journey was to take the unfinished film out of the camera, place it in another camera and expose the remaining shots. One day I photographed night views of the city with Nikon FM2, next morning I reloaded the film into Canon 300v and went for a walk. When I got the film back from the lab, I saw 18 double exposures and half an empty film. Some frames surprisingly matched in a really nice way.
Promenade night lights and great weather the next day. Nikon FM2+Canon 300v (Un)happy accidents
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Bar lights on New Year’s party night and a lovely model in the studio in January 2020. Zenit 11 + Nikon FM2
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Everything at once I should have stopped shifting film between cameras after previous accident, but I kept doing it. I was shooting New Year’s party and couldn’t calculate the exposure right. The lights in the photos are underexposed portraits with bar lights as a background. I took only 5 photos at the bar that night (in fact I shot the whole roll and forgot it). Three weeks later, I decided to finish the roll at an educational photoshoot in the studio. I was lucky to meet beautiful model, but when I developed the roll, I found out she got into the bar. I hope it’s legal to make double exposure photos of underage models in a bar. January 2020. Zenit 11 + Nikon FM2 At first I got upset about the result, and the feedback from the local community was ambiguous. Now I love these pictures, but I’ll probably give up shifting film between cameras in the near future.
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Chemical clouds over a lone tree. October 2019. Moskva-5 foldable medium format camera
Film developing The process of film development is a magical action; to an outside observer it looks like a weird dance of a crazy chemist. It requires “sorcerer’s” full concentration on his object. Once I got distracted and forgot to add the last 50 ml of liquid. As a result, I got black clouds at the edges of the frames. My pictures were saved by my lack of skill in using uncoupled rangefinder, so I was able to crop the frames.
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Memory Although photography is made to perpetuate memories, some moments disappear from my head during the process of shooting. For example, one day I completely forgot that the camera was in double exposure mode. This is where the film scanning process brings more surprises than the photo walk itself.
Ghost fisherman put their rods and boats in the car on the riverbank. October 2019. Canon 300v. Expired film
Thanks for watching! So far, I haven’t come to a final conclusion as to whether it’s a form of art or just defective photos? What do you think?
Support As I mentioned earlier this zine is distributed for free. You can support my photography adventures or just leave a feedback by buying me a coffee:
https://buymeacoff.ee/pausedlight (Un)happy accidents
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