Zach Sells' photographic risks pay off

Zach Sells wants his photos to be seen ... to be contemplated. He's fortunate to have darkroom access and experiments with multiple exposures, cross processing and specialty film. He tries to take risks with photography every day and shoots continuously. His fairground photo was an entire night at the fair, shot on a single frame.

Zach is on instagram as @m00npulp

ALTER/ANALOG: Those cross processed photos (#2 and #4) are so good. Love the colors you got.ZS: I'm glad that you like them! My friend works for the DOT and found that roll stored away in a desk in an abandoned office at work.ALTER/ANALOG: So you didn't buy it specifically for those colors, it was a happy accident.ZS: I was aiming somewhere near the color palette that I got due to shooting it at 25 asa vs the box speed of 100 but the finding of the roll was spontaneous.ALTER/ANALOG: Tell us about the darkroom you work in.ZS: I'm a member of a community darkroom in the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston Salem, NC. We're a small group with a few dedicated members all from drastically different backgrounds. The darkroom has been there for years, however within the last few months a few of us have been putting a good amount of work to get it back up to specs.ALTER/ANALOG: When you do multiple exposures, do you plan them out or is it spontaneous?ZS: I chose to learn photography through experimentation rather than research. I went through a lot of film at first. But I am happy to always be learning. Some of my doubles are planned and some are spontaneous. At times I'll have a vision for a particular double and perform it on spot. ALTER/ANALOG: Why film?ZS: Well, I've always loved old stuff and hate using computers for recreation. As an artist I want to leave my touch everywhere that I can. Film lets me choose my emulsion, choose how to shoot it, choose how to develop it and then choose how to print it. That presents so much room for both creativity and human error. I love and embrace each of these. Film has personality.