London (double) exposed.

A few weeks ago I visited London, and I couldn't miss this opportunity to take pictures of it! I took my Smena with me because it is very light, and as you might know, weight is an issue when you fly with Ryanair.

I bought two rolls of film, the cheapest colour and a true black and white (the B&W caused me hassle later on). I was surprised with the colours that the colour film produced, they were vivid and saturated, but they turned weird in the dark, and the photo was fairly grainy. The real black and white was such an annoyance. I had to get it developed back in Cork, but it turns out that they have to send it off to some lady in another city, and that raises the costs. In the end I finally got it for free because of a minuscule mishap on the shops side.

Anyway, I fell in love with London, its diverse culture and size, transport system and numerous shops and shopping centres made me dizzy with excitement! Even though hay fever caused me to have a headache for most of the time, I tried my best to enjoy every little bit of it while I could. I must return.

Enjoy my photos.

Why you should try double exposure photography.

Double (or triple) exposures can be exciting and unexpected, but you don't see them very often. This style of photography is often forgotten by amateur photographers, and that's a shame because it's very fun to do. Especially on film.

Since I don't have a decent DSLR right now I had no choice but to do it with my toy-like Smena 8M, it's a soviet film camera, you can read my impressions of it here. One of the reasons why the Smena 8M is so liked by many, is it's ability to take double exposures. But this time I decided to do it differently. I didn't take two shots at once, instead I wanted it to be more wild and random. 

What I did was use a roll of film twice. Shot all 24 shots with it once, and then reloaded it and used it again. This gives you completely unexpected results. I went around the city of Vilnius taking pictures all day, I was walking until my legs and feet were in pain. Honestly I think I walk so much I don't even notice until I can't move anymore, photography is going to make me immobile one day.

Vilnius is such a beautiful city, my favorite. Even though I wouldn't say it's a very multicultural city, it gets a lot of tourists. So many that I heard English and other languages as much as Lithuanian on the streets yesterday. The contrast between the super modern central business district and the old town is so interesting, you could even mix them up as two different cities, that's why I love to shoot here.

So I bought the film, shot 24 different photos and then reloaded it carefully and shot another 24. The pictures obviously didn't line up properly, but I warned the shopkeeper in the photo lab when making the photos so he wouldn't have gotten confused. Next day I had the photos. Honestly they could be better but I will post them here.

You can see how my photos aligned the second time, , one photo a full one and it's double exposed by a half, and a second half of 2 photos. Some of them you can't even see because the original was either too light or too dark. It was definitely an interesting experiment and I love the photos that I got.

These three are from different shoots, double and triple exposure shots that I made by taking two pictures in a row, one on top of the other. Clouds double expose really really nicely, and they are probably my favourite thing to double expose. I did try to stay away from taking pictures of clouds when I was taking pictures yesterday though.

I do believe that double exposure photography is underrated and ignored by many so I would love to get people interested in this style, and hopefully after looking at my photos you will try it yourself!