Adventures in Mistreating Slide Film

2011 was a fun year for trying new cameras and new film types. It was a lot of fun seeing the “personality” of each slide film really come to the forefront once it was cross-processed. One interesting aspect of cross-processing slide film, other than the very strong color shifts it causes, was that it did remove sharpness from the images in a very unpredictable way, as you’ll see in the photos below. Here are a few of my favorite shots on cross-processed film from my first rolls. I hope you enjoy them.

When I saw the image below, the first thing that came to mind was the interplanetary cities of the anime series Cowboy Bebop. Familiar things in unfamiliar settings, you might say. I saw the purplish skies of this photo as my idea of earth life migrated to Mars, like in the Cowboy Bebop series.

In the photo below, the Bradford pear tree blooms really popped out against the sky and other branches in the background. In the image above, the cross-processing seemed to really fuzz out the photo, which seems to be the norm. This photo below, however, is much sharper than the waxwing photo above.

In this last photo, the color shift is obviously much different from the previous two, and the sharpness doesn’t seem to have diminished as much. I’m actually surprised any photos from this roll turned out well, since the boat ride was a bit bumpy!

I hope you enjoy the photos. I’ve definitely enjoyed exploring the photos and blogs of those of you kind enough to follow, like, or comment on my posts. Like ’em or not, say something about my photos if you’re so inclined.

Cameras used in the photos were the Canon Elan II, Olympus Stylus Epic, and Yashica T4, respectively.