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Climbing out of my rut

LomoChrome Purple

I’ve really felt like I’ve been in a photography rut for some time. It’s one of the many reasons I stopped doing weekly TWiP posts. I just wasn’t getting excited about the pictures I was taking.

I don’t know if it’s the Spring air or what, but I feel enthusiastic again about picking up the camera. For one thing, I’ve signed up for Tracey Clark’s Picture Flowers class. I hesitate to call it a class, really. It’s more of a collection of prompt-based inspiration. Regardless of what you call it, I have hope that it will get my creative juices flowing. You should click that link and join me, if you like the idea of interpreting a new shooting prompt every day in May! You don’t need a fancy camera. Any old camera or phone will do.

I’ve also been playing with film again (speaking of “old cameras”). I did this once in 2014, with less-than-impressive results, but nevertheless the bug has bitten me again. This time I have borrowed Neil’s old SLR, a Minolta XG-M, and purchased a roll of LomoChrome Purple. There are 36 exposures on this roll, so on the one hand, it seems to be taking forever to get through it, but on the other hand, I’d really like to save some shots for Ocean City next month. My internal dialogue is at odds with itself over this, since buying and developing film is expensive, but also I want my prints now, please.

LomoChrome Purple is special. It does some otherworldly stuff with color. While I have yet to experience it firsthand, all of the media I’ve consumed in the last few weeks assures me that greens will render as purples, yellows will be pink, and blues will be green. Can you imagine what my photos in the Great Swamp are going to look like? Absolutely freaky.

I’ve been absorbing as much information as I can about this film. Reading blogs, watching YouTube videos. Just letting the ideas stew for a bit. I’ve even turned my thoughts to other creative film stocks I can try, and places I can go to shoot them.

I visited Flickr last night for the first time in over two years, and went looking for images that had one or more of the following properties:

Then, just like The Good Old DaysTM, I fired up BigHugeLabs (which is still there after all these years, and essentially unchanged) and I made a favorites mosaic. Like so:

  1. Rimini, 2. 0966, 3. Untitled, 4. Roma, 5. Signal – Ximg117, 6. West Pier, Brighton, UK, 7. Untitled, 8. bench, 9. open 24 hours, 10. Roma, 11. Roses are red, the frog is blue, 12. AA033, 13. 2021-10-14-0002, 14. 63050022, 15. Camp Cove Beach, Sydney, New South Wales, 16. Légère brume en rivage sur mer!

I really love the vibe of all of these images together, and I hope that my own collection of images is even half as delicious!

Now. Who wants to take bets on whether I have the patience to make the 9 exposures I have left on my roll of LomoChrome Purple last until Ocean City in mid-May?

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