Anna Swenson // Omaha, NE
A great safety feature in the Hasselblad 500C/M camera system is the dark slide, and inability to accidentally take a double exposure; a double exposure (or multiple exposure for that matter) is when you expose the same piece of film more than once, opening the lens and allowing light to burn in.
On the Hasselblad, the normal method of taking pictures is as follows:
Compose image and focus
Remove dark slide (safety that doesn’t allow you to fire shutter)
Make exposure
Wind body (resetting mirror/shutter) and advance film to next frame
Repeat eleven more times for total of 12 frames
This process seems complicated, yet is actually quite simple - but it is perfect in that it doesn’t allow accidental double exposures. As such, if you mean to make a double exposure, the process is a bit tedious.
The process of making a double exposure is as follows:
Compose image and focus
Remove dark slide (safety that doesn’t allow you to fire shutter)
Make exposure
Re-insert dark slide, and remove film back
Wind body (resetting mirror/shutter), but not advancing film to next frame (since film back is not on camera
Re-attach film back
Compose image and focus
Remove dark slide
Make exposure (repeating steps 1-6 as many times as desired)
Wind body, and advance film to next frame
So when a dear friend of mine, Amy Berge of FilmLab135 (an experimental film developing lab), encouraged me to experiment a little, I was honestly not too excited. As someone who prides himself in trying to consistently make a perfect image with an imperfectly perfect film system, the idea of experimenting, letting go, not knowing what I’m gonna get, didn’t quite excite me. However, Amy did a wonderful job of explaining the process to me, and in the end, experimenting is part of the fun.
Thankfully, Anna was up for my experiments. We’ve shot four times before, and she trusted me enough to allow me this wild experimentation for the entirety of our shoot.
I don’t even know what to make of these images. Upon first glance at the contact sheet, I was annoyed, telling Amy that I’m going to quit photography and never shoot again. I was not happy with how the images came out. What a waste of time, I told her. Unbeknownst to ballerina Anna, I even contemplated cutting up the negatives, so dismayed at how these images appeared. However, after mulling over the images, letting them marinate (proverbially, no longer developing in T-Max chemicals) for a few days, I realized I was actually quite happy with a few of the images. While I may not become an experimental photographer mistress like Amy, I’m pleased to announce I’ve made a significant progress in my experimental phase. And now I’m closing that experimental chapter, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
August 26, 2021
