Camera: Canon AE-1. Film stock: Ilford HP4

This is my second offering of light leak exposed film after attempting to replace the seals on my Canon AE1.

Such a shame. I really like the desolate composition of this photo (and the one below). Even without the light leaks…I got the exposure was all wrong.

You have a lot more responsibility to the photo when shooting film. A lot more accountability.

If I had my Fujifilm digital with me I would have sprayed off a blunderbuss of shots at different settings and compositions…and chimped¹ and corrected and gone home and opened my laptop and post-productioned a pretty decent picture.

And yet. I have, I think, accidentally captured a feeling of place that would not be present in a ‘perfect’ photo.
These shots have an almost tintype other worldly feel.

Pictures you might find on a strip of old negatives found in a mysterious battered old cardboard box retrieved from the darkest corner of a derelict attic. And you would wonder… who took this? Where was this?

1. Chimping is a colloquial term used when shooting with a digital camera that describes the (bad) habit of continually checking every photo on the camera display immediately after the shot. ↩︎