TexasGirl Photography

Did the title of this series make you look at it a certain way? Years ago, I quit giving my photographs titles in the interest of not skewing the viewer’s view. It’s easy to make a photograph say whatever we want it to say, to dictate its reception with some kind of a pointed title, to pick out of a group only the ones that illustrate the particular point we want to get across. The truth is there was no crisis, other than me loading the camera incorrectly, but the results are far more interesting than what I had intended.

There’s been an FP4 party going on, and I suppose I’m breaking the rules a bit here by sharing my photographs early, but I do things when I have the time for them so there you go. I’m not planning on submitting the results. Life’s daily demands being what they are, I wasn’t able to go out and photograph anything spectacular, and I had pretty much given up on participating altogether until the sun came out on Saturday. I was spending the day at home, a self imposed day of rest, so I loaded up the new Ondu Multiformat camera a friend gave me a couple of weeks ago and searched for inspiration.

When I first opened the back of the Ondu camera, I noticed the takeup spool was on the opposite side from “usual;” I also noticed the arrows on the top of the camera that indicate film advance direction were pointing the opposite way. Did I check the online user manual to see if perhaps that’s because you are supposed to load the camera from right to left? Of course not: I loaded it left to right and went about my business. Apparently this means the numbers for 6×9 do not show up in the correct window, so you end up overlapping all your shots, but I had no idea anything was amiss until I pulled the film out of the tank.

Happy accident, and happy me, when I realized this mistake had turned ordinary scenes from my home and neighborhood into something wonderfully muddled and jumbled. What does it mean? Well, now I know how to load the camera, but I also know what to do if I want to create images that form their own world in secret, in the dark of a lovely little wooden box. Can’t wait to use another roll of FP4!