When I shot my first roll of Lomochrome Purple in the spring, I thought that it was pretty interesting. But I also thought that there just wasn’t enough green around to make it amazing. I decided then that I’d need to try again in the summer for sure, but also in the fall.
In the summer, the greens are lush and plentiful, and so there should be corresponding lush and plentiful purples with this film. (Lomochrome Purple is a color-changing film, whereby greens are replaced with purples, and blues with greens. So think, purple trees and green skies.) And in the fall, the purples should mingle beautifully with reds and oranges, which don’t change much at all using this film.
I took these photos with my Canon EOS Rebel 2000 and I am so pleased with them! Especially when I compare them to my first purple set. I can’t tell if:
- I am getting better at film photography
- I find this camera easier to use than the one I originally borrowed from Neil
- The lab I used did a better scanning job than the lab I used for the first roll
- All of the above
Let’s take a look at the pictures, and as a part of that, you can see a bit of what I’ve been up to during September and October. It’s been a really busy few months.
Willowwood Arboretum
The first place I took some pictures was at Willowwood Arboretum, where I went for a weekend walk in early September with my mom and my aunt. Still plenty of green around at that time. (You can click on the images to enlarge them, if you want a closer look.)
The sky is somewhat blown out on these images, so you don’t get the blue-to-green vibe so much from that. But if you’ll notice my aunt in the second image, all decked out in green? She was wearing blue that day. Like denim blue. And the olive greens that you see in the stone building and some of the paths are actually gray-blue stones in real life.
Honestly, the feeling I get from this batch of images, is “Star Trek set.” Like, original 1960s Star Trek, where you could tell you’re on an alien planet simply because nothing is the right color. That feeling is strong with these arboretum images, especially the one with the urn.
Long Beach Island
At the end of September, my mom and sister and I took our annual trip to the Jersey Shore. Usually we visit Cape May, but this time we decided to do something a little different. So, we stayed about an hour north of Cape May on the mainland just next to the bridge to Long Beach Island. I’ll probably share more pictures from that trip at some point, because we stayed on a lagoon and I couldn’t get enough of photographing it 🤩
This set has it all: green trees turning purple, blue water and sky turning green, yellow sand turning pink. I love it. Especially the pictures of the lagoon 😜
Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
I was excited to wait until a bit of Autumnal color had appeared in the Swamp, because I was anticipating that purple would be an aesthetically pleasing addition to the Fall palette.
Boy, was I right. If anything, I might have liked to wait a little bit longer for more reds and oranges, but the first week of October was really the only time I could swing a swamp visit. Just the same, it did not disappoint me. I’ve said before that I think purple should be an honorary Fall color, and these images just clinch it for me.
Ocean City, New Jersey
So, if that past set was all about green going purple, these images are all about blue going green. Neil and I took a week-long work-cation in Ocean City without the kids a few weeks ago. We missed them, and it was a shame we had to work all week, but it was also pretty great. I loved walking to the coffee shop on the boardwalk every morning to start my work day. And after work was over, we had plenty of time left in the evening to enjoy the boardwalk and the unbelievably lovely weather we had.
Being there in October was new for us. As was being there without the kids. As was the condo we stayed in. And since we were usually busy during the day, we spent a lot of time walking around at night. It was good for my photography to have a different perspective than usual. Though maybe that doesn’t come through too much in these images. I’ll have to come back here later and show you some of the non-lomochrome photos I took, so you can see what I mean 😁
I know it’s weird to want to photograph the world in colors that are not true to life, but I gotta say, I really just love this film. I am not a purple girl at all but something about the purples and the aqua greens really grabs me. And the novelty has not worn off, so I will probably be shooting more of this. Late summer and early Autumn has really been a great time for it to shine, I think. It’s funny that I don’t feel even remotely that way about Lomochrome Turquoise, but there you go!