The New 55 is a new instant 4 x 5 film that produces both a positive and negative image like the old and much beloved Polaroid Type 55 film did. The project needs your support so please, comment and reblog where comments can be made and more reblogging can take place.
For more information, please check out the blog by following the link here. Lets keep 4 x 5 film alive!!!
I am learning a lot as I go along. I have found that having a good brush is really important. It helps a great deal with laying down the ink in an even way and gaining more control over picking the ink up in the right places. I still have a long way to go though. I am picking up too much ink in the shadow areas.
I think I finally have the soaking down. To get a really good print, the image has to be in very sharp relief. I do this by putting the exposed and dried print into a cake pan filled with cold water and placing that cake pan on the range with the lowest setting selected. The print heats up slowly this way and the heat works wonders in getting the image to expand. I strongly recommend carefully watching the print though because it can be over heated and the highlights might actually become cleared of the gelatin, which is a big problem.
I have also figured out that a 10% gum bichromate solution works best with the Arches Platine 140lb paper. I think its cold pressed paper but Im not sure. And exposure time is very important. It takes much longer than a gum bichromate exposure. I am not sure why that is but can only suspect that it has to do with the gelatin coating on the paper.
Both of these images were originally shot on film. The swing ride was Polaroid Softtone and the boy on the bumper car ride was Fuji 35mm. The images were converted to black and white, inverted and the highlights very slightly flattened.
Oil Print Success!!!
It took a few tries but I finally got it. This is an exceptionally complex and difficult process to understand on your own. At least for me it was. There is some wonderful information on the net about this process but I couldnt find anything about the specifics of it.
There are mentions of what kind of paper to use, how to coat it with gelatin, what kind of bichromate to use, exposure times, ink and brush types, but nothing about what the image is supposed to look like when its ready to ink, what it means when you cant see anything but a big ink square, how to keep working the print or how to dry the ink. I think I can fill in some of those gaps, though I still dont know how to finish the print by drying the ink.
First, I dont recommend brushing the gelatin on the paper. Dip it. If you brush it, you are most likely going to end up with ridges in the print. That wont happen if you dip it.
Second, I believe that any type of 140lb paper, or heavier, can be used. You just need to soak some more than other. The Canson paper I used was far more absorbent than the Arches Platine. As a result, the image on the Canson paper was ready to be inked in about an hour where the Arches print took the better part of a day before it was ready.
Which brings me to the third thing, there are no set soak times. Forget all that. Soak the print and look at it. You must see a very clear relief of the image in the gelatin to know when its ready to ink. Keep watching it and you’ll know. It starts off as a very slight relief, with the darkest parts of the image being low and the light parts being high. Ad the image soaks, you will begin to see more of the highlights rising up. Keep soaking the paper until you see a pretty clear relief of the image.
Fourth, when you ink, ink lightly. This will show more of the print when you first start out. That doesnt mean that you still wont turn it into a big inky square. This is ok. Wipe the brush off and keep going over the print. You dont have to clean the brush off entirely. Just wipe off the excess ink and keep going over the print. You will begin to see the highlights starting to clear. When they stop clearing easily, check the relief. If you see it starting to fade, put the print back into the water.
Which brings me to the fifth thing. Resoaking the print is a judgement call. If the relief is still clearly visible but the highlights arent clearing, just dunk the print and pull it back out. Dry it off and start dabbing with the brush again. You will probably pick up ink when you dry the print off. Thats ok. It will work itself out when you start dabbing with the brush. If the highlights stop clearing and you notice that the relief is fading, stop dabbing and resoak the print until the relief shows up again.
Finally, after you are mostly happy with it but are afraid to keep soaking it, you can do more adjustments with an eraser and brush after the print is dry. This is all surface adjustments though. What I mean by that is that there is no more relief. You cannot rely on the whole wet to dry aspect of the inking process. All you are doing at this point is basically painting the changes on the print.
Well, thats it for now. I love this process. Its exciting and is going to be the perfect process for my Joshua tree prints.
Some helpful links that got me started, if they will post as links. I still dont know that I’ve figured out how to put links in posts yet.
http://unblinkingeye.com/AAPG/OP/op.html
And this guys vids on youtube are good to watch for the inking process, which is the same for bromoil as it is for oil prints. Plus, his work is incredible and the videos are fun to watch.
And if you can afford it, I recommend getting the book The Keepers of Light. Its an excellent reference and I’ve used it a lot.
And I get all my supplies at Bostick and Sullivan.
As an Impossible Project Pioneer, I was allowed to purchase some of this test film, which I did in a hurry because I missed out on the 680 Beta film which turned out great, and I am very glad I did.
I LOVE THIS FILM!
I shot all my packs with my folding Polaroid SX70 SLR camera and shot the film inside and out at different times of the day and it did very well in every setting I put it in. In fact, the film did so well that I am able to add several shots to my larger series of landscape images because the images came out so well.
This film did very well in low light. I took several shots after the sun had set beneath the horizon and I had no problems hand holding the camera when I took the picture. There was no camera shake. I only had to adjust the exposure wheel a bit lighter. And in bright daylight or lights, I adjusted the exposure wheel a little bit darker.
The film also doesnt seem to be as light sensitive as the earlier versions of film but it does take a very long time to develop. I would say at least 15 minutes before some of the blue starts to fade and probably a full 30 mins, maybe longer, before all the blue is gone. However, I only kept the images covered for the first few minutes as I was walking around looking for another shot. After about 5 mins, I would put the film in my back pocket to keep it warm. Which brings me to how it does in cold temps.
It does GREAT!!! I was shooting in 40 degree temps and wasnt especially careful about keeping the images warm the entire time I was out shooting but they all came out very well developed. Just keep it in your pants pocket or an inner pocket in your coat and it should be fine.
I think this is their best color film yet and I cant wait to get more.
As I sit at my desk copying and pasting all the Google Analytics relevant keyword suggestions, it occurred to me to take a time out from this somewhat daunting task to create a post about it.
While finding and adding keywords to your website pages and all of its photos and blog posts may seem an insurmountable task, I can assure you, from personal experience, it is worth it. Within just a week of adding only a few keywords to two or three of my web pages and some of my photos, my website is now coming up on the first page for the few relevant Google keyword searches I tried. This is incredible really, considering my website has been online for more than three years now and the only way it could be found by Google before was by typing in Erin McGuire Photography. While at first this might seem to be the logical search option when looking for my specific website, it is actually all wrong. I fully admit that I might be the only person on the face of the planet who thought, when first creating a web presence for their business, that searching by their personal name was what everybody was going to do, I do believe that there are others out there like me who could benefit from what I’ve learned in the last few months.
The most important thing to realize when creating a web presence for your business is that most people in the world have no idea that you specifically, and your service, whatever it may be, even exist. They aren’t going to hop onto Google and search for Erin McGuire. They are going to hop onto Google and search for Photographers, Photography, and Photographic Prints, just to name a few keyword options out of hundreds, all with their own rankings. So how do you fix this problem? Try using Google Analytics for your website(s) and/or blog for starters.
I don’t know about most people, but when I first started using Google Analytics, it was just for my ego. I would log in every other day to see how many people had checked out my blog (I had no idea how to add it to my website then) and whoop and holler about the three people in the entire world who paid my blog a visit. Good times indeed! I had no idea then how much I was missing. It was only recently that I started clicking on the other fantastic tracking options that Google Analytics has to offer that I discovered Adwords and how awesome Google Analytics is in offering keyword options relevant to my site specifically.
When you create a Google Analytics profile for a website or blog, you add the code to the right place on the website or blog. This process is different for each website and blog, depending on how it’s created, and information on how to add the code to your specific website or blog can most likely be found online. That is how I figured out how to add it to my Etsy page and this website, which is a Photocrati theme running in WordPress. Once you add the code to your site, you need to wait at least a day before going into the profile in Google Analytics to see who visited your page. There are lots of fun graphs and maps, showing you how many visits your site received, what day the visits were made, and where those visits came from. Fun as that all is, some of the most crucial information, including Adwords, which lead to keyword suggestions, can be found on the right side of the screen. Going to Advertising, Adwords and then Keywords is where you want to go to start finding your specific relevant keywords.
I cannot take the time here to fully explain how this wonderful service by Google can begin helping you get your business noticed. It’s time consuming and somewhat complicated, but not impossible to figure out on your own. Use Google to find out how to use Google Analytics for your own website or blog. There is a lot of very helpful information floating around out there that can start you on the path to Google stardom. You just have to take the time to search for it, find what works best for you and finally, apply it. Don’t give up. It works. And the satisfaction you’ll feel when you see your website in the top ten after searching for it by using an obscure keyword will make all that effort fade away, like a morning fog under the rising sun.
I love combining these two processes together. I am finding that I actually have even more flexibility with the two processes combined than with either one done alone. I still enjoy making just gum bichromate prints and just cyanotype prints, but by combining the two, I think the prints come out looking much, richer is I think the right word. And by having the option to bleach and tea stain the cyanotype first and then doing whatever I want with as many gum layers as I want, I have as many options as I have ideas for them. I have added a few of these prints to the Gum Bichromate gallery but I have added my current favorite here as well.
Gum Bichromate over Cyanotype Print
I recently discovered Chase Jarvis’ website through a Facebook video broadcast on the Eyeist Facebook fan page. His site and blog are full of very helpful and inspiring videos for all artists but most especially photographers. I visit his site once a week and its helped me realize that I can do more with my photography that I ever thought possible. If you are an artist, do yourself a favor and visit his site.
You can now find 4, 8 x 8 fine art prints of my Impossible Project flower shots for sale on Etsy now. Thanks for visiting!
Daisy Flower Photo sepia fine art photography by MojavePhotography.
I am very excited to announce that juror Christopher James has selected one of my gum bichromate portraits to be a part of the Kiernan Gallery Illusion & Chemistry online gallery. I am truly honored to have been selected to be a part of such a fantastic show.
To see the wonderful images that are going to be in the show, please follow the link below.
Kat Kiernan, Illusion & Chemistry: The Alternative Process, Juror’s Choice: Barbara.
