The snow/sun film swapping double
By Stéphane Heinz
19 Dec 2008
With my lomographic friend Tomas Orban (http://jpgmag.com/people/bikinigibbon) we decided to make a little film exchange to double the roll. He's living in Slovakia and I live in france. At this time of the year (december) the snow was already there in Slovakia and in Nice, on the french riviera, the winter is very mild and sunny.
So the idea of this film swapping was to put on the same film the snowy world of Slovakia and the sunny one of the Cote d'Azur to create an unique snow/sun double effect.
As camera we used a very simple one: the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, a little gem that holds in your pocket and has no absolute no technical settings. The interesting part of this cheap plastic camera is to have a very wide angle lens of 22mm. As film, we choosed a Fuji provia 100F to be x-processed (that means developped in C41 as a negative film to saturate a bit more the great colors of this slide film).
Tom made the first layer in Slovakia, rolled the film back and send it to me in France. Without knowing anything of what he shot, I made the 2nd layer on a very sunny and beautiful day in Nice, and it's only when the film was developped that I saw what great "snow/sun" doubles we created, bringing the sun to Slovakia and the Snow to Nice! Those unpredictible superpositions are really the result of pure hazard, if we wanted to create these exact shots on purpose, we never could have achieved it.
That's what I like with double exposing films with other people around the world: having on the same shot 2 different worlds and photographic views, creating some unexpected pictures who have something unique. They never can be reproduced like that!
Some technical advice to making a good film swapping double: choose a slow film, that means a 100 or maximum 200 asa film and be aware that to much light on one layer will not leave enough "place" for the other layer. When you shoot one of the 2 layers, have in mind to have some contrast in the picture, to leave some dark places on the film for the other layer of shots. And if you have a camera where you can set the asa in an automatic or half-automatic mode, you must underexpose the roll from one asa value. So, a 100 asa film intended to be exposed twice, should be set twice at 200 asa to be sure that the 2 layers are to seen on the final pictures. But, as we made it with the Vivitar camera (where's no setting at all), on some cameras you can try it out as well without underexposing the pictures of each layer. You'll see than at the result if you got something or not....
So, grab your favorite camera, choose a "film swapping partner" and try to make some cool doubles! :))
8 responses
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Brian Betteridge said (19 Dec 2008):
between the vignetting and the strange contrast there the photos are actually kind of haunting. really good job.
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! Jackie Therr gave props (19 Dec 2008):
really great photos. got my vote
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A F gave props (21 Dec 2008):
very cool
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Spectre Photo gave props (21 Dec 2008):
what a killer concept..very fun!
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aurelio laloni gave props (22 Dec 2008):
an absolutely great doubles round!
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Zoë Rabinowitz gave props (8 Jan 2009):
already found a film swapping partner, great idea
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Siim Vahur said (14 Mar 2009):
Button says: "Yeah! It rocks!"
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Craig Mitchell gave props (12 Jun 2009):
Dead cool. Brilliant work
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