Godling: developing E6 film

The Godling envisions a masked figure and crafts a lonely world to fit them.

At the end of the month, Martin McCoy (martin.mccoy.art), Shane Brockway (7he_blindman), and Joe Aquilina (armageddon_bound) are running an interactive miniature art show called Godling. Many incredible artists have created pieces for the show, including Eli Parson (redwetskeleton), Isaac Tobin (weirdingsway), Marcello Rizza (uollas_uolsh), Brian Roussel (rojasnoirlac), Matt (squared_paints), and many others! While we chatted with Shane and Martin earlier this month about the event, I wanted to share a bit of the piece I created for the show. Rather than creating a physical diorama to display at the event, I photographed three separate scenes on slide film, which will be displayed with an old slide projector at the gallery. Slide film is more difficult to develop than negative film (Black and White and C-41 film), with the E6 process requiring more temperature-sensitive steps. Despite this, the process has always interested me because the resulting film can be viewed directly without inverting the images. The Godling show provided the impetus for me to learn to develop the film myself, cut the frames, and insert them into little cartridges so they could be viewed in a projector. The result is a piece called Triptych, in which the viewer (Godling) imagines a masked figure and crafts one of three lonely worlds to fit them. All of this is told via a slide projector as a “choose your own adventure style narrative.” Below are a few photos documenting the creation of Triptych. I hope you can visit the Godling show to see the entire piece (Selva Gallery, 1329 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, January 29 to February 1)!

The photos for Triptych were taken with a few different types of slide film, primarily Fujichrome Velvia 50 and Provia 100F, but also a single image on Kodak Ektachrome E100.

The cameras I used for the project. From left to right: Nikon F5 (the film camera that took the final images), D700, and Zf.

Before taking the final images on film, I took a variety of digital photos to test compositions and exposure. These were all done with either a Nikon D700 (shown here) or a Nikon Zf. All of the images were taken using an AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D lens, which I used for the final shots (on a Nikon F5).

An example of how I experimented and set up different lighting schemes to get the final images. Thanks to Bill Ford (the_ruin.501) for creating this church interior. The last photo in this post was taken with this setup.

I use a sous vide immersion circulator and a water bath to maintain the correct temperature for the various chemicals throughout the development process. I used an E6 kit from Darkroom Supplies.

Some of the images from a roll of Velvia 50 are ready to dry before being scanned and placed in slide cassettes.

Half of the slides from the roll of Velvia 50, cut and inserted into cassettes, ready to be viewed in a slide projector!

A Lecia Pradovit P 150 projector in action, displaying some of the slides I created.

Below is a small selection of the final images I created for the project, digitally scanned with my Nikon Zf and a NIKKORZ MC 105mm f/2.8 VR S lens:

Taken on Fujichrome Velvia 50, with a Nikon F5 and AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D lens. Thanks to Bill Ford for creating this board!

Taken on Fujichrome Velvia 50, with a Nikon F5 and AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D lens. Thanks to Matt Ross for creating this piece of terrain!

Taken on Fujichrome Provia 100F, with a Nikon F5 and AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D lens. Thanks to Bill Ford for creating this board! The lighting setup shown earlier in the post was used to take this photo.

If you can, consider visiting the Godling show this weekend (Selva Gallery, 1329 Willoughby Ave, Brooklyn, January 29 to February 1)!

- Eric Wier