distress

When visiting Lancaster, Pennsylvania recently, Portland, Oregon-based photographer Lindsey Boccia made the mistake of not bringing her camera bag along for the journey. Boccia wanted to play around with analog photography, so she decided to buy some disposable cameras.

A quick visit to a nearby camera shop netted her four one-time-use cameras for about $6 each. She then "distressed" them to turn them into experimental lo-fi toy cameras.

There's a subgroup of film photographers who are dedicated to coming up with inventive new ways to distress film in order to achieve unexpected -- and occasionally beautiful -- results. Last year we shared that soaking film in rubbing alcohol does strange things to your images. Here's another crazy idea: put a roll of film through the dishwasher. Photographer Tom Welland did just that and ended up with some vintage-looking photos.

Here's something to try if you feel like shooting some abstract analog photos: drop your film in some rubbing alcohol and let it soak for about ten minutes before shooting with it. Just be sure to let it dry out first lest you want to sanitize the inside of your camera. The resulting photographs should have a blue, green, and purple tint, along with tiny brown dots in random places. These photos were shot by Flickr user Casey Holford using soaked Kodak Ultramax film.

Drew Kunz has a pretty neat way of creating abstract pinhole photographs. Using a film canister as his "camera", he drills small holes into rolls of color film, distresses the film further with a small nail, and then develops the exposed film first with coffee and sodium carbonate, and finally with C-41.