Do you know how to tell whether a roll of film in a regular cartridge has already been shot? Practically no way. Usually photographers rewind the film all the way in, which is more convenient and a reliable sign that the roll is finished. But that approach has a downside: you then have to pull the leader out during development, which is a bit inconvenient. So sometimes the film is not rewound fully inside the camera, and the cartridge looks no different from a new one.
When I bought a Canon P, I also got several crudely packed rolls of film as a bonus. Everything looked new, and each cartridge had a clean film leader sticking out. I recently shot one of those rolls and, late in the evening, started developing it.
Does it even need to be said that home development is an exciting process? It hardly matters what was shot on the film: developing is always a touch of a certain chemical magic.
- 6 minutes — developer
- 1 minute — stop bath
- 11 minutes — fixer
- 30 minutes — rinse in cold water
- 15 minutes — rinse in warm water
During the final rinse I had already started carefully unwinding the film and peeking at the frames. The first frame: an icon and a candle.
“Wait a second… I do not remember taking that frame,” flashed through my head. I looked further along the negative, noticed that the frames were too bright, and suddenly realized the film had not been blank when I shot on it.
So the puzzle came together: a film that had already been exposed ended up with me, my frames were layered over it, and after development I was looking at the result of that accidental combination.
Some of the frames turned out to be highly symbolic, like the series with flowers whose existence I obviously knew nothing about.
There are also more surreal frames.
