Overheard a guy at the lab say 'mistakes are just happy accidents' and it hit me different

I was dropping off a roll of Portra 400 at the photo shop downtown and this older dude was picking up his scans. He got a whole roll back with a light leak stripe down every frame and instead of complaining he goes, 'yeah the camera has a pinhole in the bellows, but I like the random orange streaks.' I'd been hating on my own double exposures all week but hearing him say that made me realize I was thinking about my screw-ups all wrong. What's a mistake you've kept in your portfolio because it grew on you?

2 comments

2 Comments

sean_martin445d ago

That exact thing happened to me with a roll of expired film I shot at a friend's wedding. Half the frames had this weird green color shift from the age and I was ready to toss the whole thing. Then my buddy framed one of the messed up shots of him and his wife laughing and said it looked like an accidental art filter. Now I purposely shoot expired film for the unpredictability. Kept a whole series of double exposures from a road trip where I forgot to advance the film - the ghost towns and desert skies layered together actually tell a better story than the clean single shots would have.

the_wesley5d ago

That double exposure series from the road trip sounds incredible. How do you decide which shots to layer together when you're purposely trying to make mistakes or just letting the camera do its thing? I tried planned double exposures once and they came out a mess, so maybe going accidental is the smarter route.