Lens-Artists Challenge #355: Looking Back to Challenge #42 – Creativity

Lens-Artists Challenge #355: Looking Back to Challenge #42 – Creativity

It's Leya's turn to host the Challenge this week, and it's a little different. In a post on her blog, To See a World in a Grain of Sand …, Leya introduces the first 'Looking Back' Challenge, Creativity. (https://lagottocattleya.com/2025/06/28/lens-artists-challenge-355-looking-back-to-42-creativity/) 'This week we are starting to look back …' says Leya. 'one of us in the LAPC – team will repeat a PREVIOUSLY USED subject for the week [and] create a new post on the same subject'.

The Challenge Leya chose was a theme from 2019, 'Creativity' (https://lagottocattleya.com/2019/04/20/lens-artists-photo-challenge-42-creativity/). In that post she wrote that Creativity '… is the use of imagination or original ideas to create something new'. Initially, this gave me some pause. One of the reasons I originally got into photography, way back in the 1980s, was that my drawing skills were pretty awful. And they've not improved since then. I considered posting about some of the wonderfully creative street art in Portugal, or the designs on the bows of the tourist boats on the canals of Aveiro, but sadly there's little chance of spending much time there this week.

And then I remembered. For many years I was happy to produce images that were nicely exposed, in perfect (or near perfect) focus, and pleasing to look at. But then I became a little jaded with that and sought to embrace the errors and imperfections. In short, I wanted the create uncertainty in my images. I started using film again and bought a film camera, and then another, and another, until by now I have quite a collection. None of these cameras were perfect, they always had some flaws (which also made them quite cheap), but I took great pleasure in getting around these flaws to produce images from them once again. Imagine, some of these cameras might have laid neglected in drawers or cupboards for decades before they came into my possession and breathed new life into them.

A lot of these cameras are no longer light tight. I could do something about this, replacing light seals, or repairing the broken camera bodies, but instead I prefer to enjoy these imperfections. I've recently become fascinated with the Agfa Rapid system, which uses 35mm film but rolled into little canisters and not cartridges, like Instamatic film, or cassettes, like 35mm. There are a lot of variables with Rapid canisters where light leaks might be introduced, and I seem to have found them all.

The featured image was actually taken from a panorama of the beach at Mira. It features one of my favourite creative endeavours, redscaling film (exposing film backwards), and of course there inevitable light leaks. 

Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here (https://photobyjohnbo.com/about-lens-artists/), and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag 'Lens-Artists'.

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#Creativity, #LookingBack, #LensArtists, Lens-Artists, #Challenge, #Art, #Abstract, #Photography. #LightLeaks,