A Blue Golden Gate Bridge

I go through phases with slide film.

Sometimes I kick myself for not shooting it frequently enough. Cross-processed or developed straight, the results can be really special, with massively saturated colors and skewed light.

Other times, the colors are so altered and damaged that I stop shooting slide film completely.

Something like that happened in San Francisco.

My family was going to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and I was excited to see this iconic San Francisco landmark up close for the first time since my childhood.

I threw some slide film into my bag, anticipating the high-contrast reds and blues that Kodak slide film does so well. With the bright crimson of the bridge and an unusually blue-skied SF day, I knew I’d shoot a roll on our stroll.

I shot two, one regular negative film and the other Ektachrome slide film.  The regular roll came out normally, with the red of the bridge and the blue of the bay standing in contrast to the slightly overcast sky.

The slide roll was a bit of a mess.

That cyan wash was over all of the images, making them look bizarre and unreal and certainly not like a bright red bridge.

So why do I continue to shoot with this sort of film if my pictures might come out bathed in cyan?

Shooting film, for me, is a way to perfect my imperfection, to let go of my desire to control everything, to embrace the unexpected. Judging these pictures against what I was expecting—or worse, against a “professional” image—it is too easy to be disappointed. But  appreciating the pictures on their own weirdo wonky merit lets me embrace the individuality of them, the memories of that specific day, the happy accidents of a cyan world. It’s easy to shoot a technically perfect picture; that’s what digital is for. Give me a roll of film and a mess of blue any day.