I love when I get something completely unexpected!

My art photography has a certain intuitive, unplanned element to it.  I can only pre-visualize what will happen with the metal mirrors ahead of time (see here and here).  But sometimes I get surprised even with planned work, like my recent project using New55 instant 4×5 film.  The film itself has quirks that can result in interesting “flaws”, but I stumbled upon something when scanning the negatives.  I scan mine using a 55 mm macro lens on my Nikon D800e and an LED light table.  I shoot nine sections, then stitch them in Photoshop using photomerge (File> Automate > Photomerge). Once I have a merged file, I add an inversion adjustment layer then flatten the image and save. I had set the white balance to daylight, which gave the negative files a blue cast- not a big deal since I’ll be converting to greyscale.  But the inversion did something really interesting- the blue cast turned into a sepia tone!  Take a look at the sepia and the greyscale versions.  I’m kinda digging it!

Lucas James is a fine art photographer based in Manchester, NH.