maximum distortion

[dalloway]

hello all.

to begin, i hope i haven't scared anyone off with the topic title. i know it sounds like a parent-bothering heavy metal combo, but it's what i'm after. i've been a casual, amateur photographer for a few years, all the while using a borrowed olympus OM-1; any variation in equipment, apart from swapping between lenses, has been confined to swapping films. most often i'll grab an ilford delta 3200, now, to take the starkly contrasting monochrome photographs. the OM-1 only goes up to film speeds of 1600 but the prints come out nicely.

i'm looking for tips on how to get my photos to come out as differently as is possible. i remember wandering into a developers once to see a bemused customer being handed a set of prints, looking through them and finding her family-gathering shots had been bleached by a spectrum of psychedelic colours. she'd loaded a slide film by mistake, and apaprently this had reacted to the processing liquids. it isn't specifically this i'm concerned with, but if anyone has any tips on how to get strange, uncontrollable colours or can recommend films apt for curious results, then i'd be very interested. i'm still playing around with photos really so anything would be a start. a final note - the films are usually developed by high street labs, although once or twice i've been to specialist places more tailored to individual needs.

thanks,
mark.

[castledude]

Unfortunately without knowing the developer it will be difficult to do anything strange with the film other than the obvious.. expose it to light.

So you can do strange things by pulling the film through the camera in a darkened room and exposing it to various light sources. Laser pens, dim angled lights etc. After messing with the film rewind it and then go out and double expose over the pictures. You can also do similar type things by going to a neon lit area of town and then shooting long exposures while hand held. Rewind and shoot over the film.

Personally I would advise playing around with Cokin systems. http://www.cokin.com/ico3-p1-8.html or digitizing and Photoshopping. Cokins can be picked up real cheap but I really enjoy them (even on my digital camera).

In my younger days I would shoot through any semi transparent object just to get an effect. Soda bottles, test tubes, nylon webbing worked really well. Bottles and test tubes can be filled with different things also.

At most places that have arts and crafts stuff you can pick up ornamental glass rocks/marbles that can be shot through. Building supply stores have giant glass blocks that cause interesting distortions.

One more for the road "Jello" long exposures shot through it when it moves can be fun. I would actually use a candy that I found that had a similar characteristic but didn't melt.