The Art of Silhouettes: Bart Visser's Double Exposure Experience with the Fantôme Kino B&W Film

Dutch photographer Bart Visser loves to try out different creative skills and learn from each one of them, applying them to each other and growing his talents. On his YouTube channel called Creative Freedom, he shares these creative adventures.

Bart recently tried out our Fantôme Kino B&W ISO 8, which was his first time shooting such a low ISO film. He challenged himself by shooting double exposures with silhouettes showing people, cities, and nature. Today, he shares his results and experiences with us. Check out his YouTube video to see the whole process!

Hi Bart, welcome to Lomography Magazine! Can you please start off by telling us a bit about yourself and your work in general?

Thank you for having me! I am a 28-year-old creative from the Netherlands. My whole life I have been acquiring creative skills. I spent a few years doing graphic design which transitioned into more video and motion graphics work. Photography is my most recent obsession. I strongly believe that you can take lessons from one field and apply them to another. Practicing photography will make you a better graphic designer, practicing painting will make you a better photographer, studying cinema will make you a better painter. I try to collect a wide set of diverse skills. Kind of like the idea of a Renaissance man!

We sent you a roll of our Fantôme Kino film which has a very low ISO of 8. Could you share your experience with shooting the film? Did you encounter any challenges?

It is definitely the lowest ISO film I have ever shot. I was expecting it to be more difficult than it ended up being actually! I only have one camera with a working lightmeter that also has the option to set the ISO to 8. However, that is an electronic camera that will automatically rewind the roll when it is done, which would not work with the double exposure plan I had for this roll. So I used my Pentax Spotmatic with a lightmeter app on my phone. This worked great! I generally like shooting with as wide of an aperture as I can and the low ISO meant that I could shoot almost wide open in bright daylight without any ND filters.

I wanted a strong contrast for the project and Fantôme delivers that perfectly. The only challenging thing I really ran into was trying to get some longer exposures at night. I attempted to get some shots of street lights and a shot of the moon. However at the time I could not find any good information about the reciprocity of this film. So I just kind of guessed at an exposure time and unfortunately these shots did not really come out. Although that could probably be ascribed to user error more so than anything else.

Can you tell us a bit more where and what you decided to photograph?

I initially planned out the shoot to be one set of exposures for shape and the second set of exposures for texture. For the shapes we went with a series of silhouettes of mostly me and my girlfriend who helped me with this shoot. We achieved this effect by shooting into a large softbox light in my living room. For the texture filling in the silhouettes I shot several shots around my house, but most of the texture was found around Groningen and Amsterdam. Two cities in the Netherlands that I visit quite often and really enjoy being in. I wanted to try and capture the texture of these cities: the nature, the buildings and the people.

Did you plan all the double exposures carefully or were there some happy accidents?

A little bit of both! We shot the set of silhouettes first and for every shot I kept a journal with a small thumbnail sketch of the composition. Then when I went out on the street to shoot the second set of exposures I would refer back to this journal. But when loading the film the second time I misplaced the starting position slightly so the second set of exposures is about 1/3rd of a frame offset from where I intended them to be. So, careful planning complemented by some happy accidents I suppose!

Do you have a favorite shot from your experience with Fantôme Kino film and why?

Asking a photographer to pick a favorite shot is like asking a parent to pick a favorite child! That being said I think out of this roll, I have two favorites, which you can see below. They are the photos that despite my small mistakes get the closest to my original vision for this shoot. My aim was to fill the silhouettes while maintaining a high contrast and to keep the rest of the frame empty and with these two shots I think I achieved that the most.

How would you describe your style of photography?

The main focus in my photography is composition. I have always just looked at the world through a lens of composition, even before I picked up a camera. I draw a lot of inspiration from my previous graphic design experience and from cinema as well. Especially Wes Anderson's work has a big influence on me. Most of what I would consider my best work has an element of geometry. I look for lines and shapes a lot while I am observing. However I am also definitely still exploring. I think style is something that emerges from your work after you have taken a lot of photos and I don’t think my “style” is fully developed yet.

Not too long ago you started your YouTube channel. What made you start this channel and what are your hopes for it?

I have wanted to start a YouTube Channel for over a decade, but I always found an excuse not to do it. About a year ago when I first picked up a 35 mm film camera I felt the impulse again and this time I decided to just go for it. Like I said before I have a lot of creative interests and I love acquiring new creative skills, but when I move from one interest to the next it would feel like I am not progressing towards a unified goal. Like I am constantly starting over. My aim is to have this YouTube channel be that unified goal. It gives me permission to chase my creative interests as long as I document it in a video. The name Creative Freedom cuts two ways for me. On the one hand this channel is my excuse to let myself chase my curiosity. While on the other hand I hope it can serve me in my pursuit to live a free life through the use of my creativity. I hope that sharing my experiences gives other people the knowledge or the encouragement they need to go explore their own creativity.

Thank you Bart for sharing your experience with Lomography! If you're curious to see more of Bart's work and want to follow him along with his journey into photography, feel free to subscribe to Creative Freedom or take a look at his Instagram.

written by lomocato on 2024-06-06 #people #places #black-and-white #mx #double-exposure #b-w #low-iso #iso-8 #fantome-kino