Working with film as a creative medium is a process that requires a lot of trust. Unlike digital, you can’t stop and check to make sure you got the shot. You can’t check your light, you can’t be sure that your model didn’t blink until the shoot is over and you are at home (or in the lab) developing your work. This means that on the day, you have to trust that you got the shot, or if you didn’t, that you weren’t meant to capture it in the first place.
I love playing with in-camera double exposures. This process, however, doubles the need for trust.
… I’m going to back it up here and explain what a double exposure shot is for anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with using film as a medium.
When you are shooting with film, you need to measure your light correctly in order for your film to be properly exposed. Not enough light, your film comes out dark. Too much light, it’s over-exposed and comes out blindingly white with little definition. When you shoot a double exposure, you are taking two separate shots on a single frame of film. This means that each time you shoot, you have to expose your film half way, giving it half the light that is required, so that both shots combined provides you with a properly exposed image.
Some cameras have functions built into them that make capturing a double exposure shot easy. You can hold down a button that sort of tricks your camera into thinking it’s moved forward to a new shot when it hasn’t. My cameras don’t have this capability. I can manually trick it but it doesn’t have quite the same precision. This means that when I shoot double exposures, I generally shoot an entire roll this way (at half light) and then remove the film, put it back in the camera and start again.
So. Not only do I have to trust that I have done the math correctly and measured my light appropriately, I have to trust that I’ve lined my film up on the exact right peg both times so that the images I have in mind have lined up over one another properly. On top of that, I have to trust that my composition plays out on paper like I think it will in my mind. With double exposures, the darker regions of a photo will take to the second image better. So, picture an image of a mountain range and a bright blue sky. The second image you overlay will show up nicely on the mountains, but hardly anything will show in the sky. You need to consider these things when designing your final piece.
You can spend months on a double exposure project, as I am right now, and you won’t know until you develop your roll at the very end if it’s come out right. This is something that would have paralyzed my process at one point. I’m happy to say, though, that my fear has shifted and turned itself into excitement and curiosity. I’ve come to learn that my double exposure projects never work out exactly as I’ve pictured them - but they always work out. In fact, I’ve stood there in my little home lab staring at my wet negatives and weeping at the fact that a piece turned out so much better than I could have anticipated. Weeping? Yes, weeping. I have a lot of feelings and I’m not ashamed of them. They allow me to experience deeply and translate the human experience into a tangible image that others can relate to. Besides, the weeping comes with a bit of laughing. Everything in balance, right?
I sometime wonder if this reaction to my own work is related to imposter syndrome. The feeling that I’m not actually an artist, not actually a photographer. Private moments like this feel like gifts from the universe - a whisper that tells me that I am the thing, the title, the action that I question and that I’m already in motion.
Not long ago I bravely submitted a series of my double exposures to an international photography competition. It was the first time I’d ever submitted my photography to anything public. It was the first time that I’d allowed professionals with credentials in that arena observe and analyze my work and give their two cents on whether it had legs. Interestingly enough, they thought it did. In the amateur section, I walked away with two separate awards - peoples’ choice award and honorary mention in my category.
I try really hard not to base my worth as an artists on external opinions and acceptance. I do everything I can to bring my attention away from how the end product is received and put it on the process of doing. I have deep trust that when I carry my camera, the shot comes to me. Like a magnet, me and the piece come together and meet in an unexpected way. All that is needed is that we both step out of the door - ready to create together. That being said, there is the age old conundrum of art needing an audience. So now and then, it’s nice to have too.