Fine Art Photoblog

This is another film photo from a photowalk on Huntington Beach. I had been shooting black & white all day, but I knew that we’d be sticking around for the sunset so I brought some slide film with the intent of cross processing. I packed a roll of Velvia 50. My past experience with slide film had been limited to Velvia 100 and Ektachrome E100VS. The Velvia 100 gives me a strong red/magenta shift, so I assumed that the Velvia 50 would give similar results. I thought it would be neat to shoot a sunset and have the colors shift to the red/magenta end of the spectrum.

To my surprise, the Velvia 50 didn’t produce red/magenta color casts. Instead, it turned out very blue with a little green mixed in. So rather than adding to the reds already present in the sunset, the blue/green canceled out part of the colors — as you can see by the white spot in the middle of the sky. Although this was a miscalculation on my part, I’m very pleased with the colors that came from this mistake.

The other surprise I found in this roll was the heavy vignette (or whatever it may be) on the right side of the frame. Not sure why it happened, but I’m glad it did! That aspect kind of adds some extra interest to the photo.