This  archival coastal image of  tree roots on the edge of the lagoon at American River on Kangaroo Island in South Australia was  part of a bunch of 5x4 colour negatives (Portra 160 ASA) that Atkins Lab -- a  commercial photo lab in Adelaide -- cross processed  in   E6 processing by mistake.  

I was pretty upset  at the time and I wrote about the episode  here.  The cross processed files remained in the archives and were ignored.  What has changed since then is that I've  been seeing a variety of the hand crafted alternative processing images  in the online exhibitions hosted by View Camera Australia.  I found these images fascinating as they opened up a different way of doing photography  to the perfection path  I'd been engaged in.   

Though I admired the work I was seeing in the online exhibitions I judged that the alternative processing pathway wasn't for me. I have  enough problems with large format photography per se without taking a portable darkroom into the field as well and taking 3 years or more  to become proficient in the process.  The slow process of  large format film photography has  enough  imperfection and unpredictability  to act as  counter balance to the computational digital for me. 

What I did  was  to take another  look at the ignored  archival  cross processed files but tI did  so  from the perspective of alternative processing. They actually looked ok. 

It is ironic that in 2022 there are no commercial labs in Adelaide  currently offering E6 processing. It's gone for good as it doesn't make money.  There is only  C-41 processing.  That means doing E6 yourself, sending the  film to Melbourne  ( eg. 5x4 sheet film to Vanbar Imaging or 120 to FilmNeverDie), or  giving up on using transparencies altogether. 

This is another negative from the bunch of cross-process negatives.  It is a picture of Kangaroo Island's  Red Banks  and  Backstairs Passage which lies between mainland South Australia and Kangaroo Island.  

Even though cross processing cannot be considered alternative historical processing both of  the above  images now look pretty reasonable  to me.

I realise that people experiment with film by  purposively cross processing their (expired)  film to achieve the funky color shifts they desire in order  to defy or oppose the conventions and canons in photographic culture of  the perfect image.  Or they mimic the effects using Photoshop.  Or they construct homemade cameras, which they then  use to make images that are blurry, poorly centered, covered with dust and scratches, sometimes overexposed, or conversely, very dark.

I won't be doing any more cost processing -- large format colour sheet film has become  too expensive to experiment/play around with.