Let light leak

Light gets in everywhere. In our modern world it is almost inescapeable if you live in the city. Councils compete with each other for who has the most garish LED lit sculpture or tree or bridge or almost anything. Some of it is wonderful and atmospheric, a lot of it is just for the sake of it.

The ability of a film camera to work is very simple really. It is a light proof box until you press the shutter to let light in. Light cannot penetrate the box we call a camera in any way. Modern film is super sensitive to light, that’s why we can shoot with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second and still get an image. It’s really quite extraordinary.

I loved telling my students that early film was so insensitive to light, that to take a portrait without an external light source, people would be literally bolted to a chair and sometimes even their neck would be in a bind so they couldn’t move. The simplest expression to hold for seconds at a time was no expression at all. Hence why early portraits appear expressionless.

The image below was created by a light leak. It was not intentional but works a treat. For some strange reason at the end of the roll I was shooting, instead of rewinding (one of my favourite things to do on a manual camera), I instead decided to open the back of the camera. This is quite hard to do, as it requires you to push a lever whilst simultaneously pulling up the rewind lever. It is to make you think twice before opening the back of the camera. I didn’t think at all. At the moment the back popped open I knew exactly the stupidity of my actions and slammed it back shut. However no matter how quickly I moved to undo my stupidity I had let light leak.

© Christian Pearson - Velodrome light leak