Aliens Of Our Past Attack!

 

The other week I decided to take things to a new level with ORP and tried it using a slide film (diapositiva). I later on deliberately had  it processed as if it was a negative film.  Such "cross-processing" normally results in very saturated colours and high contrasts, and since I was using colour filters when taking the pictures I was expecting strong tones to create new and strange colours as they blend into each other as a consequence of the multi-exposure.

Well, strong tones is what I was expecting. But if you chose to use some film you've never used before and apply chemicals it was not really made for, then you should be prepared for the unexpected. And so it happened: to my initial horror the cross-processed unknown film produced the complete opposite of what I originally wanted, namely almost monochrome pictures in shades of red and white. 

I believe that everything happens for a reason, and now that I look at these pictures vaguely two weeks after the "initial shock", I think that their "alien" tone in fact goes quite well with the messages the photos convey to me - and which I tried to translate into spoken language in the titles.       

 Aliens Of Our Past Attack

In my previous blog post I mentioned Cream's song "Those Were The Days". Apparently that tune had lingered on in my mind because a few days later, after Nina and I went hiking somewhere in Styria with my parents and my brother (all pictured above) I decided to experiment around with the cover of a special 4 CD set with all songs that Clapton, Bruce and Baker recorded together in the Sixties. I put one of the CDs on top of the cover so that only the face of a female with a somewhat weird facial expression was shown, and placed the light source and camera in a way that spectral colours would appear on the surface of the CD.

 ...and although spectral COLOURS are not precisely what I got, I at least got "spectral RED"  :-) 

 

  They Are Trying To Lock Away Nature From Us Humans 

Chilling at my parent' s place after the hike, I at one point lied on my back, put a coffee-house chair above my head and took pics looking up into the lamp. That merged with one of the several photos of skies and trees which I made during the hike.

 Like Trying To Catch A Falling Leaf

Walking around in Vienna with Nina a few days ago I picked up some leafs. When meditating on where and how to photograph them, I decided to go for Nina's suggestion and put them onto the stone floor of our kitchen and illuminate them with some strong light coming from one side.  The evening before I obviously had a photo shoot with my own fingers  :-)  These two pics superimpose another one of those pics from the hike in Styria.

 Aliens Of Our Past Disappear 

The woman's face from the aforementioned cover of the "Cream" recordings, encircled by one of the four CDs, shares the frame with what I believe are beams of light through blinders at my parents' house, and both blend with yet another sky picture taken in the South of Austria...   

 

Resealable Freshness ?

 Styrian skies and a box that contains rather popular potato chips together ask me a tough question. I do not have the answer - do you?