By: Chuck Miller
experimental photography, Uncategorized

The Cohoes Falls in a purple-rainbow cast

I’ve been playing with this LomoChrome Purple film now and again.  LomoChrome Purple is designed to be shot with a standard 35mm film camera, and it is supposed to replicate the look of infrared film.  And if I use different filters on the LomoChrome, it can create dreamlike, surrealistic viewscapes.

Yesterday, I took a roll of LomoChrome Purple to the Cohoes Falls, and shot the Falls from the lower access level.  I couldn’t shoot from the riverbed; it was closed for the morning.  I set up my tripod and took four pictures – left to right – in a panoramic shot of the Falls.  Stitching four images together, I got this image.

Cohoes Falls - LomoChrome Purple
Cohoes Falls in LomoChrome Purple. Nikon F100 camera, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens, LomoChrome Purple film, four images stitched together with autostitch.de program. Photo by Chuck Miller.

As you can see, LomoChrome Purple can turn foliage purple – you can see it in the violet hue of the tree at left.  LomoChrome Purple can give a pastel-like aqua color to the water as well.

After I got the above shot, I started horsing around with different filters, in an effort to enhance or manipulate the image to my liking. Here’s what happens when I put an 80B light blue filter on my camera lens to achieve the same panorama.

Cohoes Falls - LomoChrome Purple with blue filter
Cohoes Falls in LomoChrome Purple. Nikon F100 camera, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens, 80B blue filter, LomoChrome Purple film, four images stitched together with autostitch.de program. Photo by Chuck Miller.

Of course, I didn’t just use a blue filter.  I also shot the roll with several different colored filters – red and yellow and green and who knows what.

I will tel you this… those tinted shots turned out terrible.  I couldn’t enter those in competition, they’re awful.

But…

As I was scanning in the negatives into my computer, I imagined what the picture would look like if I stitched together different colored filtered shots of the Falls.  Nothing to lose, right?

Okay, autostitch program… do your stuff.  Help me make chicken salad out of these chicken feathers.

Cohoes Falls - LomoChrome Purple with filters
Cohoes Falls in LomoChrome Purple. Nikon F100 camera, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lens, LomoChrome Purple film, four images – each shot with a different filter – stitched together with autostitch.de program. Photo by Chuck Miller.

Now that’s seriously surreal.  You can tell there were different filters used, and the picture almost looks like a hypercolor power-shot.

Let’s see… oddball film… colored filters… stitched panorama…

As you can probably imagine, experimental photography sometimes involves testing out different ideas and different concepts, and with a little bit of pluck and luck, something surreal and dreamlike can appear out of your efforts.

Like this.