Film Fiasco: Portrait Series Update

It's been a crazy week.

I got back from my Spring Break over on the East Coast on Saturday and boy... that week had its ups and downs.

I'll spare you the mind numbing details of doctors' appointments and got to the juicy stuff:

I got the film portion of my portrait series.

Pros: I had a nice time in NYC while I sent it off to be processed.

Cons: Just about every roll of film was under exposed.

Not going to lie, I had a mini heart attack that lasted a week because of this... mostly due to how weird the negatives were. Some rolls came out slightly underexposed, while others appeared as though no information (aka light) reached the film. I knew this wasn't my own error as I did the same process with each shoot. 

Same two lights. 

Metered before shooting to get a proper exposure. 

Dark slide out. 

Sealed the film once finished. 

If it had been my own error the results would have been that all the rolls came out with the same level of under exposure... but that was not the case. Once back on campus I took the negatives to the head of the facility and he suspects the shutter in the camera is at fault. On one hand it's comforting to be confirmed that it wasn't my doing as it was my first real time using 120 film... on the other it's disheartening that after doing everything right, a freak occurrence left my moth's worth of work unusable.

But we move on.

I scanned the negatives I could scan, though three looks were lost, and tried to make the best of an awful situation.  In hindsight, though it wouldn't have really helped, I should have used 400iso film for a studio setting with low light instead of 160iso. The scans are below and in the meantime I'll be working with the digital images for my gallery as well as any publication opportunity. In the meantime before summer break I intend to shoot as much film as possible so that I can have successful rolls to build up my film confidence.

Until next time.

xo

Rae Blaiyr