Omission to Oblivion
- Akshoo Mull
- Jul 26, 2021
- 2 min read
Omission - The act of not including something or someone that should have been included, or something or someone that has not been included that should have been. [1]
Oblivion - The state of being completely forgotten.[2]
- The state of being completely destroyed.[2]
- A 2006 open-world RPG in The Elder Scrolls universe made by Bethesda. [3]
Accidents or failures always occur in photography, especially in film where variability can be completely random (due to light leaks or chemical errors during the developmental process). This can either ruin an image you planned out or turn it into something interestingly different.
Most of these pictures are me trying to experiment with night-time flash photography which went terribly wrong because I didn’t shoot at flash sync speed. You might be asking: what the fuck is flash sync speed? Ken Rockwell describes it as ‘the fastest shutter speed you can use with flash, period.’ [4] Normally on Analog cameras there is a flash sync speed which dictates the shutter speed that one must shoot at. Most older models shoot at a flash sync speed of 1/60th or 1/125th of a second and newer models shoot at 1/250th or 1/500th of a second.
Shooting at a faster shutter speed than the sync speed causes a partial blackout of the image which has occurred in images 1-3, creating a void-like essence, almost reminding me of space.
Image 4 is the result of me not focusing correctly and causing the subject to look faceless due to overexposure.
Image 5 provides a B&W photo of steam coming out of the exhaust during a snowy day which ended up becoming scratched during development or when in the camera, but to be honest, I have no clue how it happened or what it is.
Through mistakes and errors, one can capture unanticipated results and allow for further experimentation within the many avenues of photography.
Sauces
Akshoo Mull explores the accidental nature of art through this series of photographs. In the mistakes he made experimenting with technique, an unpredictably alluring quality was found in the images he had taken.
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