A schtickle of dish soap

When I was rising through the ranks as a young martial artist, I remember thinking that many of the senior black belts were essentially retired in place, no longer actively sparring or pushing themselves very hard in training. The coveted black obi was often just decoration, a status symbol, or a means to support their growing bellies. When I earned my black belt, I went in a different direction, and decided to start training in a different martial art. In other words, I went back to being a white belt again, which, if I'm honest, required a major attitude adjustment. 

Recently, I stumbled upon some images on Instagram tagged #filmsoup. This turns out to involve taking an exposed roll of film and cooking it on the stove in the broth of your choice: salt water, beet juice, vinegar... you get the idea. Of course, my first reaction was to roll my eyes since, of course, stuff like this has been tried before many times. 

Yet, why not come at this with more of a beginner's mind? So, I put my ego to the side and prepared some delicious film soup of my own. I boiled a roll of exposed Bergger Panchro 400 in a mixture of salt water, black tea dregs, and a schtickle of dish soap for 10 minutes. I let it dry in a sunny part of my studio for a week and then I developed the negatives normally in a 1:25 solution of Rodinal.

The roll of film I chose to process had been sitting around for a while, and I had forgotten what I had shot. Not the family Christmas photos in other words. The first image is of a door jamb I must have thought was interesting. Boiling water had the effect of warping the film emulsion in addition to the other effects. Visual research...

The second image is of my arm in front of a window. Was I offering up a certain gesture? I guess we will never know, but again, perhaps this soup thing can lead somewhere interesting.

Next time, here is how I would do things differently. First, I would shoot (with intent) a series of images that might be improved by a treatment that is both destructive and somewhat random. Second, I might try changing up the ingredients. I'd maybe add a little fixer to the mix, add something acidic (to mess with the development). I think I would avoid boiling the negatives as the buckled emulsion was difficult to scan. Finally, I would load the exposed film directly into a processing tank and 'cook' it in there rather than on the stove. No need to contaminate my sauce pans with film soup, and no loading sticky negs onto a film spool.

Good light this weekend. Osu!