Susan Plover

The error was a “Happy Accident,” resulting in a layered image with more narrative than my original investigation. In Edinburgh I engaged with a window display as it was being un- installed , Time was not on my side and the shop was closing with lights going off .My creative aim was to capture what I felt was a darkly narrated tableaux (pieces were being removed from the display and the daylight
was fading rapidly).

I chose to use a flash to spotlight the piece. It was a spur of the moment opportunity and a knee jerk decision made in haste. The effect of the flash bouncing off the window resulted in an area of light just above the “body” of the mannequin. In my opinion this adds a surreal quality to the piece ,almost as if we are viewing an out of body ether ….

What I failed to notice was the reflection of the traffic behind me in the window which featured quietly but unintentionally in the final piece.

 

Guy Tarrant

Earlier this year I was sent a Kodak Brownie 127 camera in order to participate in an experimental vintage arts project called ‘Only the Sunny Hours’. At first I was unsure what to do and was perplexed by the crudeness of the camera. Using my first reel of film I attempted to take pictures in as totally free and uncontrived manner as I possibly could. I produced a small series of pictures which I called ‘Nothing in Particular’ to which I wrote this accompanying text in response to using it:

“How clumsy and odd this camera is, it feels so ancient and primitive, click and press and then wait a very long time to see what happens. Caught in the crossfire of wet vs. dry as a student, indeed caught in the crossfire of B&W versus colour many years before. A camera so reliant on sunny days, so hit and miss, what to take; a lifetime of mug shots and picturesque hum drum scenes. This time I take it’s bulky box outside into nowhere in particular and click at nothing in particular.”

The title of this photograph is ‘Nothing in Particular’#1 (bit of arm, fence, concrete floor, black shape). I suppose what I was doing was trying to create an accidental randomness in my pictures but I am wondering if a photograph can ever truly be completely free of involvement?

 

 

Deborah Duffin

I have collected errors from my earliest days, while using film cameras. Errors often created lovely atmospheric images with no obvious use, but all the same I found them interesting and added them to my collection. When I finally bought myself a digital camera, the first thing which struck me was how easy it was when hand held, to make many errors! This led me to begin exploiting the use of errors, by using the camera as a drawing instrument.

This series of six images are examples from a larger series. I decided to take the possibility of errors to its extreme. I had been photographing a local fun fair at night for some days. On this evening, after dark I set the camera to take sequential images, aimed the lens at my subject, as I walked I set the shots in motion and walked along allowing the camera to take the shots without my having any control. The results were totally unpredictable. Details and combinations of forms and effects made me look in a new way at my subject. These are a few examples from the set of around 40 images.

 

Richard Shipp

This is a scan of a 35mm slide taken with a Hanimex SLR. I am still not entirely sure what happened to create this image but guess it must have been something to do with a mechanical issue with the shutter. It is the only photo I have like this as it never happened again.

I used to number my slides and this is number 229. It is in a plain white plastic mount with no date or other details on it. Other numbered slides close to 229 are from August 1979 and were taken whilst on holiday in Northumberland. So I guess that this slide is from that time and place.

It was completely accidental and I remember being intrigued by it because of the almost three dimensional effect caused by the overexposed section on the right. You can see the clouds through this section yet the plants in the foreground are in front of it.

I also have a rather poor quality 12″ x 8″ print of Slide 229. I could rarely afford to have prints made from slides at that time which just goes to show how taken I was with the image.

 

Beth Barlow

I am a socially engaged artist. This photo was taken when I was creating a performance piece about walking bare foot through extremes. I had the wrong white balance setting.

 

Crystal Heiden

I approach my practice as an experimental process always questing for the
intangible.
image 1- this is a still from a video that I was doing where I attempted to walk with a previous version of myself.
image 2- I was trying to take a photo of my friend in a mirror and someone’s arm got in the way obscuring the bottom of her face.
image 3- In an attempt to take a long exposure of the night sky the pre-dawn dew settled on the lens and obscured the stars
image 4&5- these night shots were not in focus
image 6- this is a still from my GoPro when swimming through an underwater cave. The light reflecting on the bubbles on the ceiling create false voids in the stone.

 

 

Marisa Culatto

These are out of focus images which occurred because of wrong camera settings: entirely my mistake, but I think this gives the images an even eerier feel than intended.

 

Sarah Wölker

ID Ends is an experimental photography-project about language in faces: faces of language, unconscious expressions and the fact that even in an image without figurative lines we tend to see a face. I consider the face as one most moving
motif. As working with the technical limitations of the Pinhole camera the results arises from this organic process; using an intuitive tool fits better as my main topic became the perception of time. Photography uses the principles of mathematic and I would like to go in the opposite way: No develop time, available light, no meter.
In this work I engage to disappear in time.

This as initial point I found reasonable to prepare seven more or less identical cameras
from match boxes to get the size defined. The following rules I made up- was disappearing in the process of developing. First there was a strict plan of taking one image of the same expression, every day, at the same time and space. But many coincidences led to very different pictures which are to split in groups of expressions. Suspenseful images happen to appear, when I let arbitrariness in matters of time and capriciousness win. After this process of getting me in the matchbox I try to not care about the times of: developing, get positive pictures, illuminating and enlarging. Still it worked until a certain border- from where I had to decide more and more until the decision to not decide win. I declare different sizes, qualities and shades as the desire-able result. The negation of valuation is one conclusion of the process in which it is impossible to disappear.

Judith Hay

The image was an accident, I was trying to get my son into photography and at some point snatched the camera from him.