Some images about disease inspired by peripheral artery disease and claudication . Mixed media.
Imitating an old greeting card.
(Best greetings from the smoker’s valley. Befort is a locality in Luxembourg. Beefort means leg away.)
Reusing a CT.
CT and medical stamp of the human figure.
An idea I had long time ago was to switch back to black and white film photography.
I started with film photography in the 70th, mostly black and white.
At university I developed film on glass plates in the spectroscopy lab.
Later I met Michel Medinger while at a holiday job at the Laboratoire de Santé (service des eaux directed by Josy Barthel) in Luxembourg . He made me dive into artistic photography.
As a teacher in chemistry I offered courses in black and white photography, joined the local photo group Flash.
With the coming of digital photography, the difficulty to get chemicals and paper and access to a darkroom I moved somehow away from photography.
What brought me back to photography was my activity at the print museum in Grevenmacher where among the printmaking I got in charge of making plates for relief printing. This leaded to photography in combination with printmaking . This again brought me to investigate alternative photography as I didn’t need a darkroom.
The latest and I think the most perverse idea is to shoot on film as I did in the 70th and 80th, but being in lack of a darkroom to digitize the negative and from thereon to proceed on the computer.
This offers several advantages.
It us less tiresome than printing on paper, especially retouching. The darkroom work is simplified by using Gimp and Rawtherapee (or any other software).
I still may print on traditional paper (which s fun).
I can produce digital negatives/positives to continue in alternative processes, in printmaking or on paper.
My digitizing set-up:
Top –> Down
For digitizing I use a Lumix DC-FZ82 with exposure bracketing -1 0 +1.
The 3 images are combined in GIMP using G’MIC-Qt filter Layers-Blend [Average All].
Adjustments and inversion are made with GIMP.
The picture at the top is the digital file. Looks more or less OK.
If one compares the two print outs there are a number of differences. Comparing the digital to the paper print there are to noticeable differences which one is able to redress: the contrast for the digital is somehow less than for the classical print. Also the digital shows some tint (printed on home printer with no colour management). Both I think may be adjusted by tweaking a little.
The major difference which can’t be corrected is the difference in sharpness. There is a tremendous lack for the digital print compared to the classic print.
To give a idea I put both under a 10x magnifying glass and one notices the difference.
Whereas for the classic print the borders are clear and sharp they are smeared for the digital print.
Brownprint
Arches platine
sensitizer formula by Christopher James, Alternative Photographic Processes, 2nd ed., p. 234
3 drops Tween 20 5% / 3 ml sensitizer
(Note: without tween 20 the image is flat, grainy and lacks contrast)
exposure 20″
Gumoil print
1 sol. 13% (NH4)2Cr2O7 /3 gum arabic 14Be; 1′ exp; bleach 1+6; ivory black;
lanaquarelle 300g HP
Cyanotype which after development was toned with black tea (Ostfriesentee).
Bleached with borax and than toned with black tea (Ostfriesentee).
Cyanotype bleached in diluted Rodinal solution and afterwards toned with black tea (Ostfriesentee). (–> Black)
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Same negative, same paper (Boesner LineArt224 ) and same sensitizer solution (J. M. Eder: Rezepte, Tabellen und Arbeitsvorschriften für Photographie und Reproduktionstechnik, Verlag von Wilhem Knapp, Halle (Saale), 1942, 18.-19. Auflage, p.225).
Exposure times vary: 4′, 2′ and 5′ .
My penny plain contact print frame, front and rear view.
Materials needed:
A glass plate, cardboard of the same size as the glass, 4 clamps and some tape.
The cardboard is cut halfway through and reinforced on the back by some tape.
Open contact print frame for inspection of progress.
Some links to more elaborate DIY constructions:
@ Youtube
A concise handout about the process get started ( workshop on cyanotype):
cyanotype-manipulations (PDF:)
Sir John Frederick Herschel and his invention/discovery of cyanotype:
Mike Ware: John Herschel’s Cyanotype: Invention or Discovery?
International Photography Hall of Fame: Sir John Frederick William Herschel
Kshitij Nagar: Sir John Herschel: How Photography Got Its Fix
Chemistry and Light: Cyanotype process
Anna Atkins
Encyclopaedia Britannica: Anna Atkins English Photographer and Botanist
The Guardian: Blue prints: photography pioneer Anna Atkins’s hand-crafted images – in pictures
see also references in: Cyanotype – In the footsteps of Anna Atkins
Prussian blue:
Amercan Chemical Society: Molecule of the Week – Prussian blue
Alexander Kraft: On the Discovery and History of Prussian blue
John Griswold: The Accidental Color That Changed The Course Of Art
There are numerous internet sites which propose how to produce a digital negative.
Some links:
MP Photography (especially cyanotype)
Eyes On Photography (especially cyanotype)
and more.
And of course on paper see references in previous post.
A concise handout to get started ( workshop on cyanotype):
négatif-numérique (PDF)
Carlo Krier 