Happy Accident

In a lot of my photo classes we talk about "happy accidents." These are usually times when something has gone wrong with either the camera, film, or other equipment such as a scanner or computer. I quite like the notion of a happy accident because sometimes when your expected outcome does not meet expectations it can actually turn out in your favor, if you keep an open mind to it. As for this example piece the actual image of the bridge was not the most dynamic and I ended up using all nighttime shots for my bridge portfolio so I was not going to use it anyway. The accident actually made the image better. You can see it at the bottom of the image where the dark outline of the actual film strip appears. That is not photoshop, just to clarify. That is actually how the film came out when developed. What happened is that when I had my film rolls in my developing tank I accidentally turned on the light in the film loading room before I had completely closed the developing tank. The light entered the tank and proceeded to expose the film while it was wrapped up in the tank and created the film strip pattern you see at the bottom. The scratch line pattern above I think is the reflection of the inside of the tank and I love how it fades from the filmstrip silhouette into the image of the bridge above. This is a prime example of an accident that turned out to be happy. I'm actually seriously considering making a photo book called Accidental Photography and having a bunch of photos in it that are all happy accidents. More on that later...