As mentioned in my post at the beginning of April, my intention was to make various portraits using Lomography’s Lomochrome Purple XR 200-400 120 format film. From what I’ve read and seen, this film emulsion adds a reddish hue to your highlights and deep purples to your shadows when underexposed. I wish I could provide some sample images showing just that, but sometimes things don’t work out as planned.
When April rolled around, the weather in NYC began to start to feel a bit like Spring. There was still a chill to the air most evenings and by the time I’d return home, there was just enough good light left to make a handful of photos. Unfortunately, a technical malfunction in the film lead caused the roll to bunch before spooling, ultimately making the film back pop open while on an evening photo walk. Damn.
As with all things in life, when things don’t go as planned you just have to improvise. With only a handful of days left and nearly a month’s worth of street portraits wasted, I dug into the fridge and pulled out a roll of expired Fujifilm Acros 100 gifted by a good friend (thank you, Anthony). Instead of focusing my lens on strangers, I decided to commit this lens to the people and place that are most familiar to me.
All images were shot with the Canon Canonet QL17 and Fujifilm’s Acros 100. While there are recent rumors of Fuji backpedaling on their plans to end of life this emulsion, there still don’t seem to be any concrete plans to continue the line. It’s a beautiful, fine grain black and white film that provides good contrast and great sharpness in your images. As you can see from the above, while I was not able to get every shot perfectly exposed, Acros allows for lots of leeway when pushing in development. Sometimes your best-laid plans fall apart. This project is a reminder to me that when things don’t work out as planned, you plan on making things work.
Alberto Lima 