Washed & Fried - or - The Dangers of Cargo Shorts
In early May, Renee and I were out and about and I was carrying my Hasselblad 500cm with me taking some shots. Trying to travel light, I put a second roll of Lomo 400 Turquoise film in my lower left cargo shorts pocket to load in case I ran thru the first roll. This was easier and lighter than carrying a second pre-loaded back with me. I didn’t end up shooting that roll, and, um, well, I forgot that I had it in that pocket.
Doh!
When doing laundry the next week, I pulled the shorts out of the dryer and felt a lump in that pocket. I’m known for leaving paper towels, napkins, etc in my pants pockets and creating a mess in the dryer. Just ask Renee. But this lump was different. I unsnapped the pocket to find a mess of what was left of the cardboard box that surrounded the film, and the 120 spool of film still in its foil wrapper. Whew, it should be fine then, right? NOPE! The foil wrapper somehow ended up with a bunch of tiny holes in it, and warm water dripped out of the wrapper thru them. Doh!
Figuring the film was already hosed, I thought I would use it to see how bad it was. Certainly a cycle thru the wash and then the dryer had to affect it in a very adverse way. But I couldn’t put it into my camera when the film inside was still wet, so I put it on top of my hot water heater for a week to dry it out. I mean, it works great for wet shoes so wet film should be fine. Right?
A few weeks later we were down in Cincinnati at Spring Grove Cemetery, and I had that troubled roll of Lomo Turquoise in my bag. I popped it into my Hasselblad 500cm and took some shots. I didn’t really hold out any hope of getting any results, and once shot I threw the roll into a box of some other color film I needed to develop.
Last week I found time to do some developing. After scanning the film with my V850, I was surprised to find somewhat usable images on the film. Here are my favorite 6 shots from the roll. Click on the first one to open in a lightbox to scroll through.
Well, what do you think?
I’ve never really been into that “film soup” trend, but weirdly I kinda like the results. I’m not certain that I would abuse film again like this on purpose, but there’s something to be said for unexpected results and letting the film and cargo shorts gods take the wheel. If I was doing a project and I was looking for this sort of result to incorporate into it, now I know how to achieve it.
Have you ever accidentally messed up a roll of film and then shot it anyway to see what happened? What were your results?
As always, thanks for reading!
Jeremy