I noticed the other day that this blog was in some very desperate need of some color film. Unfortunately I just haven’t been working with color film all that much lately. In fact, I meant to buy some at the local camera store this past week but when I walked in I pulled a handful of black and white film off the shelf by pure instinct and walked out the door without buying any. Yikes! Talk about walking around on pure autopilot.
So in order to add a little flair to this blog I’m just pulling an image out of the archives. There was a short time a number of years ago when I was doing a lot of experimenting with cross processing slide film. This was mostly because everywhere you looked it seemed someone was practically giving away their old expired slide film in favor of transitioning their entire work flow over to digital. Now that film has gained back some popularity you don’t see this quite so often. I found myself cross processing this stuff mostly because I learned very quickly that processing slide film that has been expired by ten or so years just ends up looking muddy and bad. With cross processing you at least have a chance of getting something interesting from the results.
With Kodak Ektachrome specifically I always noticed a shift in skin tone toward a yellow cast. I never minded this particular look. In fact I rather enjoy it. It may not be realistic in the slightest, but it has a bit of a 1970’s pulp novel cover feel to it. It’s the right type of yellow to look larger than life as opposed to sickly or too intense on the eyes. It’s a cool effect and looking at this image is making me feel inspired to go track down some more expired Ektachrome film to see if I can recreate this aesthetic again. I remember this photograph was made with nothing but natural light coming in through a window that was just behind me. The memory is very much distinct because I was balancing on the edges of the tub and holding my Mamiya C330 TLR upside down in order to get this shot.