Urmson-Burnett Photogram Prize

A photogram is an image made on a light-sensitive material without using a camera or an image forming lens. Most commonly made in a darkroom, objects placed between a light source and photo paper cast shadows which are developed and fixed, as with normal photographic print. More adventurous artists have taken the process outside, working in the landscape at night with artificial light sources. It is also possible to create photograms using other photographic processes like Cyanotype, Salt printing or Van Dyke.

This new national prize competition and exhibition celebrates the creative potential of images made without lenses.

The Urmson-Burnett Photogram Prize is a biennial, open submission exhibition, which takes place in Salisbury in February 2014, and is followed by a prestigious central London show at Silverprint, the sponsors.

Main cash award: £500

Additional Student Prize: Silverprint Cyanotype Kit and Silverprint Solar Paper

Also the opportunity to sell work through the gallery.

For full details see the Silverprint website or follow this link:

http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=42f2b55cc98e6b5d3e6e06693&id=e15b3083cd&e=e1371083a7

Wet Collodion at Lacock

Lacock Abbey. Peter Renn 2013

I've been interested in the Collodion process for a long time. I've designed my 'Behemoth' 20"x24" camera to take glass plates or tintype sheets, and I've a couple of cameras in my collection specifically bought or adapted with it in mind. As a way of making very large negatives it's not the easiest, but it does offer a lot of advantages, not least being a unique, very beautiful image quality. The positive images have a subtle, silvery beauty which is especially seductive.

While many processes can be learned from books, almost everything I've read on collodion says it's very hard to teach yourself this way. A lot of what's involved requires hand skills and dexterity; things which can be picked up with expert coaching, and troubleshooting problems, which again can only really be tackled with an accomplished practitioner at your side. The tutor for this workshop was Betsy Reed of the Vacant Chair photo studio, and experienced practitioner who works mainly in the US. She is currently at Lacock as Artist In Residence.
http://thevacantchairstudio.wix.com/homepage#!

We were also joined by Richard Cynan Jones, a photographer who specialises in 19th century processes. Richard brought a fine selection of his own kit along and was especially generous and helpful assisting Betsy and teaching the small group of five of us on the course.
http://richardcynan.wix.com/collodion

Roger Watson is Curator of the Fox Talbot Museum and an expert in early photography. He gave us an introduction on the history of the collodion process and showed us a lovely selection of original 19th century images. He was on hand all weekend giving us the benefit of his knowledge and the historical context of what we were doing.

THE PROCESS
I'll write a more detailed account for the Alternative Processes Manual later but here's a brief overview:
Glass plates are first coated with collodion, a sticky, varnish-like substance. The plates are then sensitised in silver nitrate solution for about three minutes. The coated plates need to be exposed and developed before the collodion dries, which in hot weather can be as little as ten minutes. Under red safelighting, the plate develops in a matter of seconds with little more than a splash of ferrous sulphate-based developer, and one rinsed is no longer light-sensitive. Fixing removes the unexposed silver halides and the image turns from negative to positive before your eyes - a magical process!

The processed plate, once dried is varnished to protect the image silver from tarnishing. Placed in front of a black backing, the image is seen as a silvery-grey positive. This is an Ambrotype.

Blackened metal can be used instead of glass to make a Tintype. The traditional metal is to 'Japan' steel by coating it with a black asphalt-based solution but many practitioners use anodised aluminium sheet as an easier alternative.

The Ambrotype will print as a conventional negative if contact printed or placed in an enlarger, though it's rather 'thin' to be ideal. Altering the development however will produce a negative with much more depth for printing.

PREPARING PLATES
The chemistry is pretty expensive so it makes sense to start small.  We practiced with quarter plate (3.25" x 4.25") and half plate (4.25" x 6.5") sheets of glass. The glass is very thoroughly cleaned and edged with albumen (egg white) solution before collodion is poured onto the plate, which is tilted this way and that to make sure it's evenly covered before the excess is returned to the bottle. Easy, right? - No!  It took a lot of practice to judge the right amount to use and to have the confidence to pour and tip the plate to get an even coverage. The collodion starts to set immediately and it's all too easy to get ridges, dribbles or uncoated spots. Practice, practice, practice...

As soon as the collodion is poured the clock starts ticking as everything must be done before it dries out. Three minutes in a lightproof bath of silver nitrate solution sensitises the plate, which is ready for the holder once the drips have been wiped from the back and edges.

EXPOSURE
The plate holder is like a large format 'darkslide' (indeed you can adapt these for plate glass work). It goes straight into the camera (previously set up) and the exposure is made. It's slow by modern standards but exposure times in open shade were typically 4 seconds at f/4. The camera is a modern reproduction of an old design, but the lens is a genuine nineteenth century one. The emulsion is not sensitive to the red/yellow end of the spectrum but it is affected considerably by invisible ultraviolet light.

Betsy Reed and Richard Cynan Jones set up a test shot

The exposed plate is quickly returned to the darkroom before it dries. The Fox Talbot Museum's darkroom is a delight: Set in a mediaeval barn it's beautiful, well equipped and air conditioned!  We also used Richard's wonderful portable darkroom tent: This uses several layers of red calico fabric to make a working area naturally lit with red (safe)light.  The plate is developed with a mere splash of chemical and the image pops up in a few seconds. Fixing can be done in plain Hypo (sodium thiosulphate) solution but Betsy favours a Potassium Cyanide fixer to give a brighter image with a warmer tone.  Potassium Cyanide is MUCH more dangerous to use however!


We started with portraits. The vast majority of 19th century tintypes and ambrotypes were made of people.  This is mine, made at the back of the barn and showing one of my fellow workshop students: Evelyna:




The marks around the edges are from imperfect coating of the plate, the faint parallel lines are ripples in the collodion and the greenish area on the right is a chemical mark, possibly caused by incomplete fixing (though overfixing can bleach the image rapidly so you take it out of the fixer as soon as it looks right!)
However, so long as the marks don't obscure important parts of the image most users feel they add to the effect.


The chemistry is simple enough in terms of formulae but the process is susceptible to so many variables it seems more like alchemy at times!  On Saturday afternoon the silver nitrate bath started playing up, finally diagnosed and corrected by Betsy and Richard who worked well into the evening to solve it. All was well the following morning, ready for us to take the camera further afield.

A PORTABLE DARKROOM

what is bright orange and has eight legs?

Richard was kind enough to bring his portable dark-tent along so we could work 'in the field' on Sunday. This splendid construction is a kind of tented table, covered with several layers of orange/red calico. This allows just enough reddish light in to be able to see without fogging the plates.

Set up in the shade of the ancient yew at Lacock Abbey, we had an ideal 'base camp' to work from. If you look closely you can see two pairs of legs sticking out below the red cloth. There is just room for two people.  The inside looks like this:The chemical bottles are in pockets on the left. The black thing with the drip marks in the centre is the silver nitrate tank. The empty plate holder is on the right in front of the white square sink. There is a water bag above for rinsing the prints which feeds via a rubber tube.  It's very hot in there but it works well.

I managed a better collodion coating this time and made the image at the top of this article. It was satisfying to make a photograph like this at Lacock, which is such an important place in the history of photography. The oriel window directly below the chimney is the one in Fox Talbot's famous image.- the world's oldest surviving paper negative:

Fox Talbot; Lattice window at Lacock. 1835

The weekend was a hugely enjoyable experience.  I loved being on the receiving end of tuition for a change, I learned a great deal and came away inspired to make more images.  My heartfelt thanks to Betsy, Richard and Roger for their patience, their skill and their enthusiasm.

I will display a selection of images made on this workshop in the G30 finishing room soon.  I will also be conducting more experiments and hopefully doing a demonstration before too long.

Peter.

Class of 2013

Camera Obscura project

A camera obscura (literally 'darkened room') is a wondrous thing: Anybody who has experienced the camerae obscurae* at Bristol, Edinburgh, Greenwich or the Photographers Gallery in London or elsewhere knows the astonishing effect of seeing a live, moving, silent image of the outside world in a darkened, secret space. It's an experience hard to explain but never forgotten...

*yes, that's the correct plural. It's a Latin term)

... and we're going to build one in Farnham!

It's possible just to use a pinhole (or, at this scale a hole about the size of a penny) but it's much, much better to use a lens.  I have acquired a 102" (that's around 2600mm lens which will create an image 8 feet or more in diameter. It's a single meniscus (like a giant contact lens) which I've mounted into a frame for ease of attachment to other structures. Initial tests show a very sharp, bright image and a reasonably flat plane of focus.

A true camera obscura is a room which can be blacked out completely. any light leaks weaken the effect considerably so what we need is a light-tight box.  As luck would have it the Fine Art dept. have just such a thing in the courtyard: The "Case Space" is a mini-gallery and resource, which course leader Paul Vivian is keen to lend out to interesting art projects. - and he's happy and enthusiastic for us to use it for this!

The plan is this:

At present, the Case Space has one small window set into the door. blacking this out will result in a fully dark space which is almost ideal in size. It's about ten feet (120") long which will allow some room for focussing (the lens-image distance will be 102" for infinity, but we will need to extend this distance to focus on objects in the courtyard as they are closer).

For initial tests, I propose to fit the lens in to the window space (see the photoshopped image opposite) and project onto the back wall. If this doesn't give enough focussing depth then we may have to build a temporary structure with a bellows or sliding box arrangement in front. The easiest way to do this is probably to build it into a replacement door.

Once the lens is fitted, the image can be projected onto the back wall. This can simply be painted white or a piece of white paper hung in place.

Obviously the box is fixed in position so the view is fixed.  Attaching a mirror would let us move the  angle of view slightly so as to look around. - Or it can be angled to look straight up, making an image of the sky.

Extending the use.

As a sculptural, aesthetic contemplative object, the camera obscura can stand alone. Just experiencing the image is enough for most people, but we can do more if we wish.

An early use for the camera obscura was as a drawing aid as this image shows:

If we hang large sheets of paper in the image plane, the image can be traced by hand as the chap above is doing. It will, of course be perfectly accurate in its perspective. Objects (or people!) can be arranged in front of it specifically to be recorded.

Another idea is to use photo paper. - capturing the image this way will make the box into an actual camera (and as most of you know I like absurdly large cameras!)  There should be room inside to fit processing troughs so the camera would become its own darkroom.  This adds a fascinating performance /installation aspect.

Timescale:

Paul has said he should be able to offer a choice of dates sometime early next term. This would be ideal as we want to be doing it with as big an audience as possible. It also ties in nicely with first year lectures on the lens etc.!

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS.

At this stage I'm not sure how much work is likely to be involved to make this happen. It could easily turn out to be minimal, but if we want to be more ambitious, with making images etc. more people will be required.

If you're interested, drop me an email on my UCA email prenn@ucreative.ac.uk. Let me know if you have any specific skills like carpentry or heavy lifting;-) or, most importantly if you have a great idea for how to use the camera obscura.  I'll keep a list of interested people and contact you as and when the plan starts to come together.

Peter.

Alternative Process Handbooks

The latest edition of my Alternative and Historic Processes Handbook is available for download here, if you need a copy. Note that I'd like to use more of your images to illustrate it, so send me scans of any you feel would be appropriate.

Alternative and Historic Processes: A Handbook for Photographers.


This is also available through myUCA and as a hard copy in the library - see shelf no. XX(281820.1)

Recommended Reading:
Below is the bibliography from my handbook.  I particularly recommend the Christopher James book.  It's expensive (about £40 from Amazon) but it's very detailed, covers almost everything you can think of and it's written in an accessible, enjoyable style. It's also filled with inspiring images from a great number of contributors and cogent discussion of the motivation and meaning behind the artists' work.

Adams, Ansel,The Print. 1983. New York Graphic Society

Anon. Argyrotype With Fotospeed. 2001. Fotospeed.

Anon. Polaroid Image Transfer.  1989. Polaroid Ltd. 

Busselle, Julien. 2000.  Printing Special Effects. Rotovision

Ephraums, Eddie.  Creative Elements - Landscape Photography Darkroom Techniques 1993. 21st Century Ltd.

Ephraums, Eddie.  Gradient Light. - The Art & Craft of Using Variable Contrast Paper. 1994, Working Books Ltd.

Fielding, Dennis. The Cyanotype.  Article in ‘Darkroom User’, Foto Format Publications. 1996/5

James, Christopher. The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes (2nd ed) Delmar. 2009

Langford, Michael. 2003.  Advanced Photography, 6th Edition. Focal Press

Langford, Michael et al. 2007.  Langford’s Basic Photography, 8th Edition. Focal Press

Millard, Howard, 1998. Liquid Emulsion. Article in ‘Darkroom User’, Foto Format Publications. 1998/3

Reed, Martin & Webb, Randall. 1999.  Spirits of Salts. A Working Guide To Old Photographic Processes. Argentum. 

Sanderson,  Andrew. 2002.  Hand Colouring and Alternative Darkroom Processes. Rotovision

Digital Transfer Film: Make digital negatives!

Beytan Erkmen has some Digital transfer film (for internegative/positive inkjet) available for use in G32. The film comes in A3 but will be available in smaller sizes  to keep test costs down. Student charges will be slightly more than Lustre paper , £2 per A4 and £4 per A3 sheet.

Beytan says: " I will attempt to profile the paper from digital inkjet output through the RA-4 printer to enable students to contact print DSLR capture or scans to C-type paper. I have spoken to Abbs and we will be moving the print and negative densitometer into G32 to allow students to understand how to profile the digital negative densities to match the Fujichrome crystal archive colour paper or Monochrome.
I will also be asking Peter Renn for his advice into using the digital transfer film with the alternative process workshops.
All being well, this should provide new opportunities for students to bridge the digital capture/output resources with traditional wet processes and making students more aware of the possibilities to print manipulated or constructed images onto C-type, monochrome and non-silver historic print processes."

 I've not had an opportunity to test the new material (it's ordered through UCA and comes without branding but it's manufactured by Permajet. see http://www.graphicdesignsupplies.co.uk/digital-fine-art-media-permajet-fine-art-media-permajet-traditional-baryta-digital-transfer-film-165-permajet-digital-transfer-film-165-sheets-p-5216.html

I will be making test negs for alternative processes as soon as possible, starting with Argyrotype,  Cyanotype and Liquid Light.   We will, of course make all our findings public here so you can select suitable print profiles and contrast ranges for your intended use.

Silverprint are moving...

After a quarter of a century, dear old Silverprint are moving premises from the unlikely-seeming and faintly dodgy building in Valentine Place to a new shop near Southbank University, London College of Communication and Elephant&Castle.  The new address is 120 London Road
London SE1 6LF.  The phone numbers etc. remain unchanged.  While not so convenient from Waterloo (Martin, will you still be able to pick stuff up for us?;-) it sounds like a better location. Here's a map:

The new shop opens on Mon. 20th May 2013.  For more info visit http://www.silverprint.co.uk/creative.asp

Note: I have no business connection with Silverprint (although I sometimes wish I had a penny for every time I've recommended them over the years!) 

Sally Mann documentary

Here is a link to a wonderful documentary on Sally Mann, wet-plate collodion photographer and one of the most genuine, unpretentious and personally honest artists I've seen.  Lots of great footage of her at work both shooting pictures and at work in the darkroom. 
I love the comment she makes at one point: "I hope I never get too good at this". - Referring to the 'flaws' in the collodion process: the swirls, streaks and spots which would be derided by a 19th century practitioner, but which we now regard as wonderful, authentic adjuncts to the process.  

Generally with alternative/historic processes we aren't too obsessive about perfection, but interested in the things which give the images character. It's a fine balancing act, keeping the image truly photographic, while allowing just the right amount of imperfection (if that's not a contradiction in terms!) As Sally says, "You pray... please don't screw it up - but just screw it up enough to make it interesting!"

http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/what-remains-video_fe114b6df.html

NB: The video is also in the UCA Farnham library DVD collection.

Emulsion Lifts

I've been having a bit of a play with emulsion lifts recently.  As with so many processes there are conflicting bits of advice and/or opinions out there, but it's actually pretty simple.  I'll write it all up for the Handbook but first I'll try and give an overview of what I actually tried and what worked - and what didn't!

Overview: What is an emulsion lift?

An early experiment with Fuji FP100-C. crinkly edges are optional!

'Peel-apart' instant films such as Polaroid, Impossible Project and Fuji consist of a negative* sheet, a sachet of chemistry and a receptor sheet. One the negative has been exposed, pulling it out of the film pack spreads the chemistry over the surface, which is in contact with the receptor sheet. The image is formed as a thin, plastic-like emulsion which sticks to the receptor sheet and makes the print.  If you take the finished instant print and put it into very hot water, the emulsion layer will lift off. It can then be re-attached to another substrate. The image can be distorted or wrinkled in the process, or a textured, coloured or reflective substrate can be used, altering the appearance.
*The negative can be post-processed and used too!  See below.

You will need:
A small heatproof tray or dish to hold water at a temperature of 100C or so (so NOT a plastic developing dish! - A small Pyrex dish or other ovenproof cookery container is ideal.

A clean soft bristled paintbrush.
tweezers (metal)

A kettle full of water

Scissors

Substrate material. This can be almost anything. I used different art papers for my experiments but try whatever you have around.

PVA glue or 'Gel Medium'. - Technically this is optional but it depends on your substrate. PVA is standard white glue sold in art shops, builders merchants etc. Gel Medium is more specific, being used as a modifier for acrylic paints. 'Liquitex" is the brand I've been recommended. It comes in gloss, matt or semigloss types. (more on this later.)

A source of instant film images. I have built a couple of Polaroid backs for my 5x4 Wista and my quarter plate Thornton Pickard, but you can use a back for a college medium format camera or buy a cheap old Polaroid on Ebay (NB: you need one which will take TYPE 100 size film and you shouldn't have to spend more than £10). The last option is to buy a 'Daylab' instant film slide copier which allows you to copy transparencies and allows you to make editions of prints, but you need to make the 35mm slides first).

Method:
Shoot the instant film and allow it to develop fully. Peel it apart and set the negative aside to dry, preferably in the dark.  Let the print dry fully: You may get better results if you leave it alone for an hour or so. There doesn't seem to be any upper time limit. I've made it work with prints which were years old!

Take the print and carefully trim off the white borders with scissors. This is important as it exposes the emulsion edges for the next stage.

Fill the heatproof dish with boiling water to a depth of an inch or so. (at this point I'm sure I'm supposed to put in a Health and Safety Warning on handling boiling water but if you can be trusted to make a cup of tea unscathed you'll be fine;-)
Immerse the print in the water and keep it under with the tip of the paintbrush until it stays submerged.

Now prepare your substrate. I tried a variety of art papers. The most successful was a lightly textured watercolour paper such as 80lb Somerset (available in the UCA art shop)  the worst was Daler-Rowney cartridge paper;- unsurprising as it's less resistant to getting wet.  Start with something like paper and then progress to more difficult substrates like metal or glass once you've mastered the technique. Lay a suitable piece of substrate on a clean, flat surface.  You can mark your target area with light pencil dots at the corners. Prepare some gel medium or a small container of PVA mixed 50/50 with water.

Check on your print. After a minute or three you will see the emulsion at the edges starting to separate and 'frill'. help it lift by gently running the paintbrush between it and the print surface. Pretty soon the whole image will come off the print and float around the dish like a scrap of coloured seaweed. If you can, catch it again on the print as it's easier to handle that way. Hold the print in the tweezers so you don't scald your fingers and persuade the emulsion back onto it. Don't worry about wrinkles etc.

Now you're ready to transfer the emulsion. Using the paintbrush, coat the target area with a thin film of PVA or gel medium (some people recycle the glue off the print and it does work, but it's more difficult).
The glue will start to dry immediately so you need to work fast. The technique is simple: slide the emulsion off the print and onto the new substrate. spread it out with the paintbrush (or even your fingers) and coat the top surface with more glue. Wrinkles and rough edges are generally what people want from the process so experiment with how they look. The one thing you don't want is air bubbles as this means the emulsion is not adhering properly. Work any air bubbles out by smoothing from the centre outwards.  The emulsion will stick either way up so ensure your image is the right way around. (see the note below though!).

I used some old genuine Polaroid material for my first tests. Dark images were quite robust: The emulsion was almost like a piece of clingfilm. Lighter pictures however were very, very flimsy and some disintegrated in the water. This may well have been due to the age of the film though. I have not tried Impossible Project film at this stage but it's reportedly rather thin and fragile.   Fuji FP-100C however is terrific! Really strong and easy to work with, BUT the emulsion tends to curl down at the edges a lot. This makes spreading it out on the substrate difficult as the rolled edge is on the underside. If you don't mind reversing your image, flip the emulsion over and it's then easy to spread it out.

Allow the image to dry slowly. If parts peel away when dry, reattach them with a small amount of glue.

As the image area is so small (interestingly, the size is the same as the old nineteenth century 'quarter plate' size)  simple, graphic images or portraits work best. However, being direct camera images the level of detail is very high indeed.

* If you treat the negative with household bleach to remove the black backing it can be reclaimed and scanned. I'll put more details in the manual but for now see: http://new55project.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/blog-post_6525.html

I'll post some more images here soon...

Welcome!

Welcome to the new Blog /Wiki space for Alternative and Historic Photo process users at UCA Farnham!

The intention is to share information, post images and links and generally create a community of like-minded people within this field, to further research and make work in as many different photographic processes as possible.

If you're reading this then you've probably been invited to join via your UCA email.  If you'd like to to comment or to add content then all you need is a Google/Gmail account.  I'll be administering the site and monitoring content but the more authors the better!

Note: Please only post content (words and images) for which you have copyright. - Links to other sites/ authors are fine, but please respect other artist's intellectual property!
You can, of course publish your own images (that's what I hope you will do) so be aware that they are published on the web for the world to see. - consider watermarking your images but be aware that your content may be appropriated...

I look forward to hearing your comments - and seeing your stuff!

Peter Renn.