In photography school I had a class assignment once where I had to shoot a roll of black and white film ( yes this dates me ), then hand that roll of film to a classmate. The other photographer would then shoot your roll again causing double exposures. Once the film was developed, it was a crap shoot as to whether you would get anything interesting or not, but quite often there was at least one image on the roll that was worth printing... "happy accidents" we use to call them.
The point of the exercise was to get you to not "think" when you shoot and just let the images come on their own. At the time it was a struggle to switch my brain from the technical side of photography, since we were taught from day one to shoot technically correct, to now being asked to shoot with the artistic or subconscious side. It was the first in many lessons to transform us from photographers into artists.
I still struggle sometimes with balancing the technical and the artistic sides of this melon of mine. Often when I'm feeling particularly uninspired I still aimlessly point my camera in a direction and shoot without knowing what the end result will be. No composing, no thought, just point and go. The image above is one of those times.
I recently discovered a few apps that let you do double exposures on the iPhone. One free one called BlendCam I have yet to try, but will post a photo or two once I do. I'm looking forward to taking double exposures again and seeing what kind of happy accidents I get.
Don't forget the rubber-band ball contest I'm running till Sunday! See previous post.
