Just a quick note to remind everyone that no matter where you are, there is good, local talent in your backyard. You just have to look for it.
WHYY- Wilmington on Delaware By Hand Masterworks
As I write today, the yo-yo winter we’ve been having is giving me warm, blue skies and sunshine. Perfect day for shooting? Last week I had an even better photo day. Pea-soup fog over a snowy landscape gave me a marvelously monochrome world.
Foggy, snowy days are amazing times to take pictures. With a little care in exposure, a good composition can be a great photo.
As I balanced an umbrella between elbow and neck, my peephole camera in one hand and external light meter in the other, I was reminded yet again of just how challenging snow photography can be. Keeping the equipment dry while trying not to slip on the ice was tough, but the toughest part can be getting the picture exposed properly.
Looking at snow on the ground, the first thing that one usually sees is white. Look again and you’ll see a range of shades of gray outlining the curves in the snow, leaving hints of texture, and painting shapes from the shadows of the elements in the landscape and sky. These are the details that make a nicely-composed snow scene into a wonderful photograph. But how to get the subtle details and the highlights, too?
First, you have to get the light metered correctly. Built-in light meters set the exposure for a neutral gray. This works just fine for most photos, but it can under-expose your lovely, bright snow scene to a dull, gray day. If the exposure isn’t right to begin with, there is only so much one can do with editing after the fact. So, the first thing you have to do is compensate. To do this you can:
Although this shot is fairly true to colors and shades, it required a bit of the burn tool in my photo editor to really bring out the shades and colors inside the globe.
When you get home, you may still need to make some adjustments. Whether you are using digital photo editing software or working in the darkroom, the trick is to get absolute black, absolute white and as many shades of gray and/or blue in-between as possible to make up your picture. Play around with brightness and contrast, or levels and curves if you are more comfortable with your editing skills, as well as dodging and burning tools until you have all the details visible as well as the highlights and deepest shadows.
Success!
After a week in a sunny drive way and a couple days in a window while it snowed, my first few anthotype test prints are faded enough to declare finished.
For all of these prints, the juice was brushed onto Canson DRAWING paper, which had a smooth surface and allowed the paper “leaf” to lie flat on most of the sheets. A few papers curled in the contact printing frame and resulted in edges that were slightly blurred as the sun changed position and cast shadows extending away from the leaf. The rest have nice, sharp edges in the prints.
The first few tests were done by straining ground plant material through a fine-mesh colander into a bowl. The juice was brushed onto the paper with at least two coats. Some of the finer plant matter remained in the juice and was brushed onto the paper as well. This is apparent in the Swiss Chard and Dock prints below. The dock was a particularly thick liquid when strained. After staining, the paper was allowed to dry between two screens to keep it flat. This gave the prints a blocky texture.
Later papers were prepared with a few changes. Instead of using the colander, I squeezed the juice from the plant material through a jelly bag and allowed the paper to dry sitting free on the table. The emulsion came out much smoother and uniform, and the paper wasn’t significantly curled when it was finally dry.
In the examples below, you can see the original color of the dyes in the shape of a leaf and the color to which it faded surrounding the leaf.
Note that although carrot roots are pretty much useless as an emulsion, their leaves have definite possibilities!
Next up: actual photographs!
…It’s making me wait!
I went into this anthotype project knowing that it was to be an exercise in patience. In theory, the dyes that fade the slowest will also last the longest.
I have been looking at this under the assumption that the dyes on the paper will fade similarly to the coloring in dried flowers. Interestingly, one dried flower blogger who was recommending various ways to preserve the color in dried, pressed flowers didn’t figure that the flowers’ colors would last more than 6 or 7 years. However, the Ransom Center at the University of Texas still has some of Herschel’s mid-19th-century prints, so they can last an extremely long time, albeit somewhere where they are not constantly out to view. Many people avoid this photographic process because it is not archival. Neither are pressed flower collages, but that has not stopped countless people from enjoying them!
The weather here has been mostly cloudy for the last week and a half. My test sheets have had three days in the bright winter sun and are starting to show signs of fading. It will be awhile yet before I see enough change to remove the test image- a leaf cut out of poster board.
Carrot root - much better for eating than printing! The leaves, however, might not be something to throw away.
I have had a couple of test results so far. Carrot root and red bell pepper are not really on the viable list. The On a cloudy day I let the paper sit out for an hour and a half. The dyes were unchanged sitting patiently around the kitchen for three days until I put them in the test frame. Not only was the print overexposed in an hour and a half, it continued to fade into oblivion in the shade over the next 24 hours. With further testing, this might be good for a quick demo of the process, but I wouldn’t use it for anything else. The carrot faded in the darkened room before I ever got to test it. My carrot leaf dye, on the other hand, made a nice shade of green that is sunning itself in my yard still.
Stay tuned!
Through February 26th, The Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware will be exhibiting “Masters 2011,” a showing of Master Artisans from Delaware’s craft guild, Delaware By Hand. The show includes sculpture, jewelry, paintings, photography (including yours truly!), fiber arts, glass, wood, printmaking and ceramics.
Applicants for the title of Master in their art/craft were asked to submit ten of their best works for review by Bryan Young, Curator of Easton, Maryland’s Academy Art Museum, and Sally Hansen, retired owner and director of The Glass Gallery in Bethesda, MD, antiques dealer and art collector. The judges selected the single most outstanding piece from each of the selected artisans to be displayed at the museum. Each Master was also asked to display two additional works that they felt best represented the breadth of their work.
Show catalogs which include bios of all the Masters are available at the museum.
For more information visit www.biggsmuseum.org
"Through the Bright Woods," my own masterwork on display at the Biggs Museum of American art through February 26, 2011
While my anthotypes bleach in the sun, I am reminded of another experiment I did some years ago. I had had my crystal ball photos compared to pinhole images so often I decided to try a pinhole camera just for laughs.
Pinhole cameras are insanely simple devices consisting of a box with a small hole. The earliest versions, called camera obscuras, were nothing more than a darkened room with a small hole for light to peek through an otherwise darkened window. The scene outside was projected up-side down on the wall opposite the hole for the occupants’ viewing pleasure. Scaling the idea down, later versions had a transparent or translucent back on which one could place a piece of paper and trace an image. Some master painters used this as a starting point for their work. Even later, photo-sensitive materials were placed in the back to capture the image. The box in question can be any size. One was recently made in California that was three stories high. Others are as small as matchboxes — and are, in fact, matchboxes. Most are one-shot cameras before reloading. A few are designed for rolls of film. Some, like mine, are very crude while others are precision tools and even pieces of art in their own right.
For mine, I wanted something portable enough to carry multiple cameras at once so I could take just one shot, see how it worked and try again or else take a whole lot of shots out in the field for later development. I settled on using an opaque 35mm film canister. It was small enough to stuff a few in my pocket and, as I am still a fan of film, I have an ample supply. I cut a small hole in the side of the can and then covered the hole with a piece of foil tape on the inside and outside. I poked a hole in the foil tape with a beading needle. Taking a piece of black electrical tape that was larger than the cut-out, I taped down the piece of plastic that I’d cut from the side of the canister. In the darkroom, I cut a piece of photo paper about the size of a 35mm negative and slid it into the canister opposite the hole, then snapped the lid closed. Out in the field, I set the canister down on a level surface, opened the electrical-tape flap, counted out a few seconds (10- 45 for my camera outside, depending on how bright the sun is or as long as an hour indoors), closed the flap and went home to develop the paper negative.
The results are, unsurprisingly, crude. But, what fun! Look, Ma! No batteries, gears, switches or even glass!
For further reading on pinhole camera construction, I recommendDIYPhotography.net.
How many times have you stained your clothes as a kid, rolling in the grass? How about spilling wine down the front of your shirt? Or some berry pie? Would you ever think they could be used to make photographic prints?
Photographer Malin Fabbri just released a book exploring the process of making anthotype prints, which was first developed by Sir John Herschel in 1842. While I eagerly await my copy of the book, I find myself marveling at the possibilities.
As a mom, I know all about stains. Grass stains. Berry stains. Grape juice stains. Ketchup stains. You name it, my kids have probably worn it. After reading the process overview on Fabbri’s web site, AlternativePhotography.com, I rummaged through the fridge, the back yard and the grocery store searching for stain-makers.
Today’s experiments are:
With winter upon me, my options are a bit limited. In a few months, the garden will be blooming and the trees fruiting. By then I will have read my much-anticipated book cover to cover to find out what has been tried and documented already. Oh! The possibilities!
The emulsified paper is now drying. The next step will be to put it in the sun with my experimental image and wait for it to fade. It could be hours, days or weeks, depending on the plant. Keep watching as the experiment unfolds! In the mean time, send me your ideas. What organic stains should I try next?
Whether you are taking pictures of sporting events, family celebrations or on assignment, you find that often times actions happen so fast you can’t get the camera swung around fast enough to catch it — if you aren’t prepared.
You know if someone is lighting a cake, the birthday person is soon going to blow out the candles, right? So, before they get ready to blow, get ready to shoot! Have the camera on, aimed and ready to fire when you see the flames. If you have the ability to take several shots in a row by holding down the shutter button, set that switch to “On.” Timing is everything and this will help get the shot exactly when you want it.
When I shoot pictures of people, I usually want them to be totally unaware of my presence. I hide in the background as much as I can and watch the event unfold just long enough to plan for what will happen next. At a soccer game, if I want a shot of the winning goal, I plant myself right where the shot should happen — and wait.
Likewise, when I shoot events, I watch the participants to see what they are up to, then
when something looks like it might happen, I’m ready. At the school where I volunteer, there are plenty of opportunities to do either fast, hum-drum surveys of the day or patient records of the heart-melting moments that are most treasured. A group of kids and fathers was playing Twister. I took a quick shot of the game as it began, then waited, watching through the lens, knowing full well that at some point this game was going to get awkward and silly. Later, I moved to another room, where a grandfather and a bunch of kids were playing a game. As each one made headway, they cheered and gave high-fives, so I planted myself and waited for the next time someone made progress. At the end of the day, the grown-ups gathered in one room, with lost family members lead by their children. Waiting by the door, close to the ground at kid-level, I perched, looking for holding hands, hugs good-bye or whatever may come. I was rewarded with the cutest pair of hands between grandson and grandfather, as the little guy was leading the way.
I never know exactly what will happen when I’m out and doing my thing, but a little planning goes a long way in catching what unfolds!
The level of sensitivity to light as determined by the International Organization on Standards. With film cameras, the ISO rating is used for a particular film type to tell how sensitive it is. Ratings generally range from 50 (not very sensitive) to 800 (very sensitive), though some film types can be lower or higher. Digital cameras can be adjusted to mimic these film ratings. In fact, the higher-end models can do higher ISOs than film can. Whereas film tops out at 3200, the Canon 5D can go as high as 6400. ISO ratings effect how fast a picture is taken (shutter speed), how wide the aperture needs to be to take a picture and how much noise there is in the image.
The higher the ISO, the less light is needed to take a picture. An ISO of 800 is very good for taking pictures in a dim place with no flash and still freezing the motion in the frame. It registers the light coming in very quickly, so the camera can take the picture quickly. However, because it absorbs so much light at once it may actually be problematic in an extremely bright scene. As a person with more sensitive skin will have to put on more sunscreen than someone less sensitive, so too will the camera have to compensate more by cutting the length of time it exposes a picture, closing the aperture or both. At some level the camera may not be able to compensate and the image will look pale and washed out.
Conversely, to get a nice, slow shot of something like moving water, a lower ISO is often required. Because the camera requires much more light at lower ISOs to take a picture, it must take more time exposing the image, giving the moving subject time to blur. But, because the shutter speed can be so slow in low light-situations, you will need a tripod or a flash to avoid blurring caused by shaking the camera.
A side effect of increasing ISO speeds is noise. Noise is the grainy, snowy effect in an image. A very low ISO will produce almost no noise at all with the proper exposure. As the ISO gets higher, so too does the amount of noise and the size of the grain increase.
One of the more common mistakes made by novice photographers – and occasionally the seasoned ones as well- is not watching the background and finding after the picture is taken that there appears to be a lamp post growing out of someone’s head. My own recent goof was when I was shooting from the floor, could barely see what I was shooting even with the big view back on the camera and ended up lining up a shot so that the pencil can on a high shelf lined up perfectly with the subject’s head and made a very odd sort of crown. Interesting, but it didn’t quite fit the picture I was going for.
It got me to thinking, however. This kind of alignment and perspective issue can also be used to construct some interesting pictures in-camera. One can line object up so that they appear to be in the same plane. Furthermore, placing a large element of the picture some distance behind a smaller subject can make the smaller object look bigger and/or the larger element look smaller. Line them up with the camera so that
With the right camera angle, you can make someone as tall as a house or as big as a mouse.
the resulting picture does not show much ground between them and you can make someone a giant looking down on a smaller person, or, in my case, make a very live model sit on an equally real mushroom.
I took my daughter out in the woods one day, searching for mushrooms after a good rain. It didn’t take long to find some nice, umbrella-shaped beauties growing on a convenient slope. I had my daughter sit uphill from the mushroom at a distance far enough away that she was small compared to her “seat.” The result, as you see, was a little bit of magic.
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