A Virtual Gallery: In Appreciation of Diptychs.

Recently diptychs came to mind. Was considering a film camera to suggest my son use during a Father/Son galavanting session. The Kodak Ektar H35 (Link to my review and first post to 35mmc.) came to mind. No focusing or other controls so no planning required. Enjoy the moment. Point and shoot. This led me to search Flickr for diptychs and this brought a couple of surprises.

I had created a diptych album. No recollection of this.
I had taken far more diptychs than I recalled.

I had a dance with a Olympus Pen FT (A review I wrote for KEH years ago back when I was a contributor for a couple of years.) that went well. I only let it go because it was too good, a tad too precious, and relatively fragile to sit unused as it did in the end. I have plenty ~~cheap~~ inexpensive cameras I like to hold shelf rider/dust collector status down.

Add a healthy half frame fit when I first acquired the Ektar Kodak branding exercise and the diptych count was far greater than I expected.

Why do I like diptychs so much? Glad I imagined that you asked.

The purposeful diptych.
- It is fun conjuring up scenarios on the fly where you are looking for pairs of pictures that give a greater sense of the scene. For example the around the corner pics and 180 degree diptychs below.
- I also find it fun trying to keep the math straight in my mind. Knowing that from the start of the roll I need to count by two so the film scans line up as I wish. Pretty sure the intentional pairings below came out in the scan as planned. A bit of a dopamine hit when it works out is the reward.
The accidental diptych.
- Some pairings were not intentional but still capture a theme in wonderful unintentional ways. Take the first sample below. My family went to the museum and we took in wonderful artwork. This is paired with a photo I took of my wife on the way home. A wonderful encapsulation of a day. A far more meaningful capture together than they would be separately.
- By combining two seemingly unrelated images a story can at times come to mind that was never intended when captured.

Here are some of my analog favorites along with a fortuitous accident digital triptych to close things out.

The (film) Olympus PEN FT era.

The Ektar Era.

I close with an accidental digital triptych. Had lunch with a friend. As we parted I took three quick photos of his car. When I uploaded them to Flickr later they lined up as captured in the screenshot below.