Today, is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day!
I celebrated by mounting a pinhole body cap on my dSLR and taking a drive to some of my favorite places to make photographs… Hillsborough Center, East Washington, Bradford Center and Washington.
One can only submit a single photo to the WPPD gallery. However, I can show a few more here!
Care to guess the one I submitted?
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Just a bit of fun photochemistry… I’m not sure that this will lead to any serious art, but you never know!
A couple of definitions, before we proceed…
Photogram — an image made by placing objects on a photosensitive surface during exposure to light
Anthotype — an image made using photosensitive pigments derived from plants
The images shown below are anthotype photograms made using the spice turmeric.
Very briefly, I took some turmeric, added it to some 70% iso-propanol (rubbing alcohol) and stirred it around a bit. Next, I filtered the mixture through a paper towel to remove the solids. The resulting solution is a nice yellow-orange color. This solution was painted on to paper and allowed to dry. The paper becomes very bright yellow.
I then placed objects atop the paper, covered the stack with a piece of glass and exposed things to the sun (or in one case my UV light box) for a period of hours. The light bleaches the yellow pigment giving an image which is then stabilized (and made more contrasty) by dipping the paper in a solution of borax.
The first two images shown below are photograms I made yesterday. The first image is a two hour exposure using my UV-LED light source. The second image is a four hour exposure outside on an partly cloudy afternoon. Both were treated with borax (sodium borate) after exposure.
While these photograms were exposing, I returned to my roots as a chemist and did a experiment. I took strips of coated paper and dipped them into various solutions I had around for other processes. The results are shown in the third image below. The top of each strip is the unexposed, untreated paper showing the bright yellow.
Clearly borax is not only compound that can cause a color change in the tumeric yellow. Every basic solution I tried caused a color change, the two acidic solution did not cause a visible change. The ammonia solution (far right) turned the paper bright red initially. However, the color faded as the paper dried.
I continued my experiments today. The last five images are four hour exposures made today under mostly sunny skies. These were all treated with sodium carbonate (washing soda) after exposure.
In addition to making these exposures, I took the test strips shown in the third photo and placed them in the sun for about eight hours. There was little, if any, fading of the colors produced by treating with borate, carbonate or bicarbonate.
A note on the paper… all but the last two images shown were made using inexpensive, nothing special, drawing paper (Strathmore 400 or Strathmore Vison papers). The last two image were made using somewhat ‘fancier’ papers; Stonehenge Warm (Untiled #4) and Artistico HP watercolor paper (Untitled #5). The fancier papers seem to hold more pigment (especially the Artistico) and thus the images are darker.
Lastly, the large majority of this is not new (just Google ‘turmeric anthotype‘!). However, a quick search did not turn up any mention of bases other than borax to treat paper after exposure. Thus, that bit may well be new knowledge.
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Warning… photographer talk ahead!!!
Dodging and burning are terms that describe making local adjustments to a photograph during the making of a print. Dodging is the process of selectively lightening an area. Burning is the opposite; selective darkening.
In the days of yore, when working in the darkroom, dodging and burning were done one print at a time. One manipulated the light falling on the photographic paper as one exposed the print. Master printers were able to make these adjustments with a fair amount of precision, but there was always some print-to-print variability even with the best printers.
For the UV sensitive contact printing processes (e.g. cyanotype, salted-paper printing, et al.), dodging and burning were not practical for a number of reasons. The main one being that there is necessarily little space between the light source and the print. Thus one’s ability to see where you were attempting to dodge or burn was limited and thus imprecise.
Using digital negatives to make contact prints has changed all of this. By making adjustments to the digital file we can make very localized adjustments that are “frozen” when one make the digital negative. Thus, one gets the same adjustments in each print when one makes a contact print. Furthermore, since those adjustments are made in the negative, one can apply them to the UV sensitive contact printing processes without the need to actually get one’s hands in the space between the light and the paper.
With experience, one’s first draft of a digital negative is usually pretty close to ideal, but after one makes that first print from a negative you often see that a small amount of fine tuning is necessary. Thus, one goes back to the computer to make a few tweaks to the image before printing a revised negative and making another print. I probably make second drafts of about half of my negatives. It is very rare that I need to make a third draft these days.
The four images show below are examples of the end result of this process. I had made initial prints of these images previously but each of them needed a bit or dodging and burning to be ‘perfect’. I made those adjustments and printed new negatives on Saturday. Yesterday, I made new salted-paper prints using those negatives.
The differences between the two drafts were small. A bit of burning in (darkening) on the shoulder of the marmot. Similar adjustments on the lily pad in the second photo and the dead tree to the right of the gate in the last photo.. The third image had a bit of dodging (lightening) of the pinecone and a bit burning in of the lightest leaves throughout.
The resulting prints are, to my eye, subtly but significantly improved over the initial prints.
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Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
— Found in a fortune cookie this evening.
The ‘fortunes’ usually found in Chinese restaurant fortune cookies usually leave much to be desired. However, this one seems worth sharing.
Early spring (and that is stretching it… we had eight inches of snow yesterday) is tough photographically. The light is often drab, as is the landscape. Thus making new photographs is hit-or-miss.
However, I have been staying busy experimenting with salt-paper printing. I’ve been trying different types of subjects and different papers.
The prints shown below were made on three different papers. Artistico Hot Press is a medium weight (200 gsm) very traditional water color paper; it is just a little bit warm. Crane’s Cover is a moderately heavy (240 gsm) paper that is often used for alternative process printing; it is a fairly warm paper. Platinum Rag is a heavy (300 gsm) paper made specifically for alternative process printing (especially platinum printing, as the name suggests); it is pure white. All of these papers have very smooth surfaces.
Each paper has its idiosyncrasies when it comes to coating and exposure. It is amazing to me how different the same negative can look when printed on two different papers. This is all part of the fun!
Here are a few salted-paper prints made in the past few days…
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Made on my wanderings over the past ten days.
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