Film Swap Result

One of the people who follow me on Flickr today “faved” some of my pictures so I thought I’d take a look at some of hers. I noticed that a number of her albums were entitled “Film swap with person XXX”; “Film swap with person YYY” etc. I took a look and I could see that they were something to do with multiple exposures, but I wasn’t exactly sure how the process worked so I dug a bit deeper.

I discovered that it seems to work like this: you run a roll of film through you camera; wind it back; take it out and then send it to someone else who puts it through his/her camera. The result is a roll that has been exposed twice (or more I suppose) in different cameras. And the results are something like the image above.

The guide below provides more detailed instructions on how to go about this:

Film Swaps a Rough Guide | Aware of the Void.

Other sites provide tips on how to improve your results, this one for example:

lomo lovers tipster: 10 Film Swap Tips by James Butler (slimmer_jimmer / @slimmer_jim)

I suppose it’s a bit like Aleatoric or Chance Music. I can see how trying different and somewhat ‘edgy’ techniques would be appealing. I can also see how such an approach could help you stay in touch with existing friends and even make new friends. However, I’m not a terribly ‘edgy’ kind of person and this is a bit too random for me. Each to his/her own though and if this is your kind of thing then more power to you. Perhaps I just like to retain control. I tend feel that if I want multiple exposures I can do them myself.

Will I be trying this? I looked at a number of such images and didn’t find many that I liked. It might be that I just didn’t find any really good examples (I also look at a lot of regular pictures and often find many that I don’t like). So my first reaction was to say no I won’t be trying this. But then I thought why on earth not? I might just put a roll through one of my cameras and then pass it on to a friend. Who knows I might like the results?