Monday, November 27, 2006

A Good Accident

Years ago, and I'm talkin', like, 1984, I had a good accident with my Canon AE-1 camera.

Lovely Wife and I were on the beach in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. It's up in the Florida panhandle (aka the Red Neck Riviera).

We got married in August of 1984, and I worked for Johnny's Pizza House. When I went into restaurant management with them, their unit in Ft. Walton Beach was my first gig as an assistant manager.

We were there until December of 1984, when they closed the restaurant for the winter. That's common out on "the island" as business dropped because of the lack of winter tourism there. As it turned out, the company didn't reopen the store, and sold it. It was too far from the rest of the chain of stores and didn't make enough money, that area wasn't an instant success for the company like opening another store in Louisiana would have been; there was no instant recognition of the company down in Florida.

Anyhoo, when we got packed up to move back to Louisiana, we went to the beach despite the cold weather. Our few months there were like a three and a half month honeymoon. How many people are fortunate enough to live in such a beautiful place when they first get married?

One of those last days, we had gone to the beach and I took a couple of pictures of Lovely Wife. It turned out that these last two photos where the last ones on that particular roll of Kodachrom slide film.

Also, I had apparently neglected to take up the slack in the film when I had first loaded it into the camera, and these last two photos should have only been one photo.

I took the one photo, wound the film, and took one more of her. The film didn't really advance to another section of film, my winding just took up all the slack in the roll in the exposed area, but it also released the camera to take another photo.

What I ended up with was an accidental double exposure.

And I LOVED it.

I've always wanted to take it somewhere to have a lab crop the photo and make a print for me. But, like many things in life, I put this off all these years.

I just came across this slide again this past weekend in my seemingly endless endeavor of scanning and archiving my 35mm slides.

But with the wonders of the digital age, I was able to color correct it just a bit, and make two different crops. So although I haven't printed either one, it's still great to have this accidental winner of a photo in a form I can look at and enjoy.

I submit, for your perusal, the original scan, and the two crops I made.





5 comments:

Emily said...

Oh, she is so cute!! I didn't really understand the technical mishap that made the camera do that, but I agree it looks so nice!

I can't get over the cuteness of that picture though, aww =)

JAM said...

It was basically because of slack in the roll of film inside the camera. When I wound the film one last time, instead of advancing the film, it was actually at the end of the roll. The winding action simple took up all the slack instead of moving the film forward. This reset the camera for another picture, but the film that was going to be exposed to light had barely moved. So when I clicked the shutter again, it basically took the next picture on top of the last picture.

Anonymous said...

Wow-very cool!

Brian Mc said...

Dude, you rock! I'm in the same boat, scanning 35mm from 76-97? Beautiful accident!

JAM said...

Emily, Jenny, and Brian, thanks. Brian, I love the whole scanning and the possibility of archiving my slides and manipulating them with Photoshop Elements, but it is a darn slow process, but I sit there and do that until my back demands I quit. I'd much rather do it than watch TV. Plus, it gives me fodder for the blog too.