Happy Accident

Even though I love this photo it is in no way what I was going for…

Having recently visited the V&A Gallery in London I was inspired by a photo they had on display. I’m not sure who the photo was taken by but it was a portrait with a halo like effect around the head.
The halo had been the light trails of moths.
I imagined this had been achieved by shining a back light on the subject to attract the moths to fly around there head.

I set my Holga up on a tripod at my girlfriends house, balanced a high powered torch in the fence behind my head and got my girlfriend to fire the shutter while i stood motionless.
The first thing that went wrong is that the flash didn’t fire. This pretty much eliminated all chance of any facial features being captured due to the intense light behind me.
The second and larger problem was the distinct lack of insects.
Normally there are hundreds of moths and other nocturnal beasts flying around whatever light bulb they can burn their tiny feet on. Perhaps it was my presence but they were not interested.
The third problem which turned out to be the savior of the photo was that I hadn’t wound the film on from my previous shot. The shot on its own would have been a pretty uninspiring photo of my local beach. However once double exposed onto my silhouetted body the results were better than I could have hoped for. I especially like the clouds. And my glowing ears.

It just goes to show that however much time and effort you put into getting the perfect photo sometimes it’s just better for it to go wrong!

written by kernow_and_cambria on 2011-04-08