[X-pro image on Kodak Ekta 400, Nikon F4s. Circa 1989]

Back in the day Cross Processing was something that us ‘artsy’ college kids did quite a bit. In fact during my first two years of college in Philly, I think that’s the only way I did color photos. Back then, we had to shoot it, find a lab to process it, then make C prints in our darkroom where we could tweak the color out with the dials a bit. That’s right, I used to actually print color prints in a darkroom. But back then the labs hated us. We used to bulk load our film and just have them ‘run the negs’ and half the time we’d get them at a discount or free because they came out with the colors all wacky. When the labs started to figure out what was going on they would ban us from even dropping off film as we were killing their chemicals. 

Slowly, one of us always got a part time job in a one hour or pro lab and would run the x-pro at the end of the day, or right before they were going to change and clean the machines. (Which was not that often….) We always got the rolls processed somehow, and probably ruined the relationships between every lab in Philly and every student who came to AIPH after us…

So why did we do it? We just loved the colors, the contrast and the way it hit the paper. It was something new, something that added a bit of edge to our images. We didn’t even bother with color correction any longer, we just printed like maniacs. The tech kids were in the hallway with their Kodak adjustment filters tweaking a point here and a point there.. (anyone who has printed color knows the people I am talking about… you know the ones who stressed over that perfect skin tone, and getting a red flower that perfect shade of red..) We weren’t those kids. We pushed for even crazier processing. Pushed and pulled the film, cranked the temperature up… ran E-6 through C-41, ran C-41 through E-6. If there was a way to come as close to destroying the film and still get a printable image, we tried to find it.

[Right: LC-A, X-pro   Left: Blackbird Fly, normal process]

So what happened? 1990 happened. Adobe Photoshop happened. Polaroid Transfers happened. Everything just got old. I graduated Philly and headed to the University of Delaware to get another degree.. but this time it was in the new-fangled “Electronic Imaging” Color prints came to an end for me, and pixels took over. I wish I could go back in time and slap myself right across the face. Not because I regret learning Photoshop, but because I lost touch with color printing. One thing I did take with me from all that was an introduction to the Diana camera, and the seed in my brain that one day I would come back analog photography. In the years past, I have see so many bad Photoshop filters and curves to emulate the effect that it made me sick. I wanted that look back, but I wasn’t going to cheat and do it on the computer.

What does that have to do with Cross Processing? Lets go back to the beginning. Labs hated us, and most of them still do. Its tough to find a place around here that will cross process without charging you an arm and a leg. The explosion of Lomography and Toy Camera Photography has brought X-pro back to the mainstream. You see it in ads, you see it magazine spreads.. fashion shoots.. and more then you realize, you see it in movies. So I went in search of a lab that would be willing to not only process the images, but talk with us about the process of Cross Process. Why and how it’s done, and how its evolved in the last few years. Photoworks is the lab, and Dave Handler is the man who makes it possible. 

In Part Two we’ll have an interview with him, and take a closer look at how X-pro effects the images you shoot.