No photographer can totally avoid making mistakes in photography, but not all photographers can make their mistakes look like they were done on purpose. The most famous example comes to mind when Man Ray's assistant, Lee Miller, accidentally opened the darkroom door while Man Ray was printing, leading to an interesting effect called Solarisation.

I am still waiting for that inspiration mistake to happen to my photography. In comparison, my mistake while developing my second roll of film led to ruining most of the roll.

I had arrived early for the next class for some extra darkroom time, so I picked up a tank and some spools. It was only after three failed attempts to get the film on the spool that I decided to put the film into the tank, take a breather, and figure out where I was going wrong. Here is the mistake that was made. I had only placed it on the top lid and forgot to add the stem, so the artificial light poured all over the film.

It turns out that the first spool I was using was defective. The spools have two ball bearings to help feed the film through the only one. I lost all confidence in only having one, so the film could not be fed on correctly. After getting a new spool, I eventually got the film on the spool and was ready to be developed. Luckily, I had turned up early as I could finish up just in time for class. I was somewhat disappointed that the film had black rectangles where the images should have been.

This time, I shall forgo the proof sheet as I only have a few usable frames. But for the technically minded, I was developing Kodak Tri-X EI400 in XTOL1:1 for 8.5 minutes at 20C. As there were so few usable images, I have not bothered to make a proof sheet.

This shot was taken down by the main pond at the Royal Botanical Gardens with a Vivitar 85-205mm f3.8 zoom lens with a close-focusing feature. What drew me to this image was the soft tones of the Lilly petals compared to the slightly spiky stem. The shot was taken at 1/60 f8, which I felt comfortable hand-holding at the time.

Also, I'd like to point out that the bottom of the frame has been fogged out from the light leak.

When I was at the florist trying to find some flowers to make a photograph of me, then one thing that I kept in mind was that I wanted something that had a tonal variation on the petals. When shooting black and white, one must always remember how the light, tones, and textures will render them as tones of grey.

These Gerberas had some lovely pink tips that I expect would look great in black and white in soft light. In the end, the fogging on the bottom half of the frame makes this shot open up this square crop for me.

I quite like this shot. Sure, it is not perfect, but maybe the mistake produced something interesting.