Sometimes unpredictable things happen in film photography. There are light leaks, expired film creations, old cameras you can’t count on, surprise rolls, double exposures… In many of theses cases, some of your images may be ruined but in some very lucky instances, you may accidentally create images that you love!

For our short, two week trip to the Canary Islands, I had planned to take a small, light, cheap camera so I slipped my thrift store Pentax K1000 into my hand luggage at the last minute. I also packed a few rolls of regular film (could have been Fuji Superia but I didn’t write it down and still don’t have my negatives back to confirm) and a few rolls of something new I wanted to try out, a film called Dubblefilm.

The first surprise came when I realized I had rewound a roll of film in my camera for a double exposure project and forgotten to finish it. When I received the scans, there were so many good ones and among them, this gem: my daughter among succulents in the ocean.

Or an image of Ana swimming in the ocean, where the first image was of a fishing rod sitting on a pier. The surprise result is Ana being “fished”!

A second unexpected accident happened because my thrift store, $100 dollar camera is not very clean and probably needs some TLC urgently. Therefore, some of the results don’t look that good but some other images have a timeless quality about them that is only a result of dust and grime in my camera and has nothing to do with the roll of film I used.

The final surprise was getting all sorts of different colors and effects in my scans using the Dubblefilm. I absolutely adore them and I know I need to buy more of this film as soon as it is back in stock.

And if you’re really, really lucky, two or three accidents happen at the same time like in this example below, where you get dusty and grimy, camera advancement malfunction, and colorful film!

Weird but still beautiful, in my opinion. Have you had any unexpected surprises? Let me know below!

Maite