On Christmas Eve I polished up my Vivitar Powershot Point and Shoot 35mm camera that I rescued from the recycle bin at work and loaded it up with a roll of Kodak ColorPlus 200. I wanted to do something experimental, and the ease of point and shoot cameras lends itself perfectly to experimental photography. I wanted to capture the bright lights and glamor of Christmas, but simultaneously I knew my holiday was going to be a fairly quiet one home alone with the pets. That is where the idea of double exposing the roll came into my head.

If there is anything that 2020 has taught me it is how vital it is to experiment and try new things with photography. Staying at home and photographing the same things, like most of us have been for the last 8 months, has been hard to find the creativity and the inspiration so I have been challenging myself to find new ways to capture and look at the same subjects.

Once I loaded the roll up, I shot the entire roll of different Christmas lights. I walked around the neighborhood and photographed the lights outside, I found different colors and streaks of light. Near the end of the roll I did get a little lazy and just shot the same shot of out of focus lights in my livingroom over and over. The results were still fun though because the subjects were different.

When I got to the end of the roll, I just wound it back as I normally would, but this time very careful to not wind the leader back inside. Then I just loaded it back into the camera, ready to shoot my subjects on Christmas day. (by subjects I mean the cat and the dog. Very thankful they never complain that I am constantly photographing them. Luna has been very helpful art directing this post and has hardly left my side while I’ve been editing photos and writing this.)

In the end, the frames didn’t line up perfectly. A trick I have learned to get both exposures to line up is to make a mark on the film when you are loading it up to know where to pull it out to when loading the film. Even though it didn’t work perfectly I am still very pleased with how they turned out and am already planning my next roll of double exposures.

~ Tessa

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One response to “5 Frames… Of Christmas double exposures on Kodak Color Plus 200 and a Vivitar Powershot (35mm Format / EI 200)”

  1. Fun experiment.
    Thanks for posting. I especially like the cat who looks ready for the runway and bright lights.

 

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