The Magic Ginkgo Branch

Lumen print from the Magic Branch
Collodio POP paper, 4x5

Recently, Charlotte was host city for the Society for Photographic Education -- SouthEast 2013 Conference. I was honored to be part of the conference, not only as a participant but as a presenter. I ran two workshops during the conference, covering my favorite topics: alternative processes. The attendees of my workshops made cyanotypes and lumen prints, even four life-size cyanotype murals and some extremely large (roll-format) lumen murals. It was amazing, awesome and great. That isn't what I want to tell everyone about.

No, instead I want to talk about things that happen because they do. During the conference, just before my first workshop, I was walking back from fetching some supplies in one building and taking them to the lawn where my workshop was going to be held. Mert Jones, the SPE volunteer photographer, was walking with me. We cut through behind a building and found a ginkgo branch laying on the ground. Not a little branch, a big one. A major limb, 3-4 feet long, with several sub-branches and dozens of leaves in perfect condition.

Not too strange, right? WRONG! There are no ginkgo trees in the area. None. Not in several blocks. And here was this perfect branch, laying right on the sidewalk I was taking to get to my workshop. It wasn't even right next to the road, it was a good 20-30 feet from the curb.

Lumen Print from the Magic Branch
Kentmere RC 5x7 paper

Most of the cyanotypes and lumen prints I do are photograms made with leaves, grass, etc. In case you don't know about ginkgos, they're a living fossil. They're the only tree of their type that exists anywhere in the world and nothing else looks anything like them. Their leaves are absolutely unique and gorgeous. And right one the day where I was going to do my first major conference presentation, standing up in front of other professionals and introducing them to my medium, an entire branch of this exotic species fell directly into my path.

Good things just happen. Not everything that the universe throws at you is going to be bad. Sometimes, when your day is already going well, when you're at the peak of your game, something will go right. Not wrong. The universe won't choose to remind you that you should be humble and thankful for whatever you can scrape together. Sometimes it fist-bumps you and says "Keep on keeping on, man."

I still have the Magic Ginkgo Branch. It's sitting in my lab right now, drying out. I've chosen a few dozen of the most interesting leaves that were in the best condition and I'm pressing them dry. After the rest of the branch dries out, I'm going to cut it up and make something out of it. Me and the Magic Ginkgo Branch are going to be friends, because it reminds me that the universe can be a pretty cool thing. Sometimes it can just do nice things for one, single person, without any reason. That's worth remembering.

Blogging for Thor: Lumen 150!

Today I printed my 150th lumen. Well, at least my 150th lumen. I'm not exactly sure, because I made some tests that just didn't come out, or I did demos and never recorded them. However I've now made at least 150 lumens and have 150 in my archives. So that's a pretty big milestone. I might not be able to match the thousands of John Fobes, who has two different Flickr galleries because he hit a hard cap on one gallery! Still, I'm pretty happy with hitting 150.

These are two more of my lumen prints using Liquid Light painted onto parchment.  I even have a sheet of black parchment that I originally didn't think I'd have any use for. You can't print a cyanotype or anthotype on black, so I didn't think there'd be anything to do with it. I'm really excited to see what comes out, I'm just looking for a good leaf to use.

Coating still presents a problem, because even multiple thin layers are still showing considerable bubbles and streaking. Fresh foam brush and everything, working from a completely liquified emulsion, but still not a smooth coat. I'm not sure if that's simply a result of applying the emulsion to parchment, but I think it's just me being bad at coating. Hopefully my coatings will improve with practice. Despite the bad coating, I did get photographic-level detail on Lumen 149. Check it out!

I am a little sad that these thicker coats also seem to result in darker, blander backgrounds. I'm gunna do some experimenting, but the backgrounds turned this violet-black color almost instantly upon exposure to the sun. None of the cloudy cyan-lilac-pinks that showed up when doing quick exposures on single-coated vellum.

Blogging for Thor: Liquid Lumenation

Lumen print on vellum,
3 hour exposure.

I was recently able to obtain some Liquid Light, which is a liquid photographic emulsion. It comes in a thick, gelatinous white fluid. The idea behind Liquid Light is that you can paint it onto almost any surface. Wood, ceramic, metal, glass, bone, cloth, whatever. It's a really fun concept and I've seen it used quite well by some other photographers. They were using it as intended: for exposing traditional photographs onto non-traditional surfaces. I'm less interested in that than using it for Lumen Prints!

You're supposed to heat the gel by sitting the bottle in hot water, but then it melts down into a runny, milky liquid. I'm still trying to get the emulsion to a medium consistency where it's spreadable, but still tacky and thick. It does not like sticking to metal, though I had some luck with glass and more luck with vellum. I'm trying to ponder other possible substrates... I do have some bones laying around....

Lumen print on glass, scanned with
a black background.

My first attempt was on a small piece of glass, 2 inches square. It's from a very tiny picture frame that I wasn't planning on using. I didn't heat up the emulsion before applying it, so it didn't spread very evenly. That was compounded when after the exposure, I had to wet the surface to get some residue off the back where the emulsion had glued the glass down to the cardboard surface I was using to coat on. The emulsion started to come off before I could hair-dryer it back into place. The final result isn't bad! The glass sheet has, however, now deteriorated. I tried coating it with a UV-resist spray to see if maybe I could display the glass in its frame... and no. No, that didn't work at all. Now I have a solid maroon sheet of glass with an interesting texture. I might be able to sand off the emulsion and try a new image, though. Sanding the glass would probably help the emulsion stick better next time.

Lumen print on roofing tin

After the glass, I attempted several times to get a good coating applied to some sheets of roofing tin I had left over from a tintype workshop back in college. This time I did heat the emulsion and it ran like water, sheeting right off the metal. That was rather infuriating. I ended up dumping a good 20-30 milliliters of emulsion down the drain, I couldn't get it to stick to anything. I finally did get a coating onto a sheet of the tin, but only by using fully cooled emulsion and even then it was patchy and streaky. Ugh. I know that you can get liquid emulsion to stay on tin! I've done it before, I have SAMPLES! I have to figure out how to heat the emulsion to the correct consistency so it's sticky enough to stay on the metal, not just sheet off, and not clump up. While I enjoy the streaky appearance, I want to get the same level of detail in these Liquid Light lumens that I get in paper lumens. I don't see why that would be impossible, since I know that Liquid Light can reproduce photo-quality prints when used according to standard instructions. My coating just needs to get better before I'll be able to reach that level of clarity. I might talk to some people like Aspen Hochhalter at UNCC or Phil Moody at Winthrop, both of whom have experience with liquid emulsions. I think Laurie Schorr might have some too, I'll have to ask!

Lumen print on vellum,
3 minute exposure.

Lumen print on vellum,
3 hour exposure at dusk.

The most recent tests I've done with the Liquid Light are on vellum. I ordered a whole new pound of scraps from the nice folks up at Pergamena and haven't felt very Cyanotype-ish lately. So, why not use it for lumens? Some very fun results so far, and I'm going to try double coating the vellum next time, as well as pinning it down like I do when coating for cyanotypes. These three first tries were completely covered coatings, like my earliest cyanovellums. It's really, really hard to tell when you've fully coated a sheet of vellum with the Liquid Light, though, because the vellum just soaks up the emulsion and leaves no color behind. Cyanotype chemistry stains the vellum yellow, but this stuff is virtually clear. You can only tell by seeing where the shiny-sticky residue remains, and that isn't always easy in low-light environments. I may have to start working under brighter conditions and screw premature exposure. There certainly is a lot more color variation in the lumens on vellum than on glass or metal.

If you're interested in seeing bigger scans, you can view the full-size images on my Flickr! They're tagged "liquid light" if you're viewing this blog post... from the future!

Blogging for Freya: Ends & Beginnings

Dear Internet Spiders, you may have noticed that my blog this week is being posted on Friday, not Thursday. I decided to make a little bit of a change and so I'm dedicating my regularly-scheduled blog post to Freya, not Thor. Why? Well, the last few days have been a very challenging time for me and Freya is all about renewal and happy endings. Thor, we'll get back to you next week. Don't smite me, bro.

I've been teaching at the Light Factory, a photographic museum and education center in Charlotte, for a bit less than a year now. I taught an Introduction to Photoshop and was trying to get some Intermediate and Advanced Photoshop classes set up. Twice I was able to run alternative photography workshops at the Light Factory, teaching students about anthotypes, lumen prints and cyanotypes. I was looking forward to expanding those workshops, doing more of them and developing second-level workshops about toning cyanotypes, processing lumens digitally, that kind of stuff. Taking the processes a bit further, you know? There were other classes I wanted to teach and had pitched successfully, just pending a good time to schedule them. Things like bleaching and heavy-metal toning of silver gelatin prints, or a LiquidLight workshop where students could make photos on fabric, glass or other fun stuff!

These things shall not come to pass. On Monday, the Light Factory suspended all operations and terminated its staff. There are noises being made that the shut-down is temporary, but that is not the impression I have received. If the Light Factory survives, it will be in a new format, new location and with a new administration. It won't so much survive, as die now and come back later.

After 41 years of promoting photography, teaching students and inspiring visitors, the Light Factory has failed and fallen. I am honored to have been part of it, even if for a brief time.

The educators and staff I worked with at the Light Factory are amazing people, and I'm not going to let the closing of a facility stop me from continuing to work with them. I'm not going to let it stop me from teaching either. I'm going to be looking into ways to continue teaching, the same kind of lessons and workshops I've been doing. There will be challenges, because I'll have to coordinate everything myself instead of just showing up and saying words at people until they learn things. I'll need to find spaces for the classes and somehow gather new students. How? No idea. I'm bad at social networking.

I wish all the best to my friends formerly of the Light Factory, and all the best to my students that are just as sad to see a place they learned so much fall apart. We'll still make things work, they just have to change now.

It'll Change Your Life

This is a direct follow-up to my last post, Whittling, where I talk about my experiences trying to introduce my students to alternative process photography. It came across pretty bleak, according to various readers. There was some good discussion on Facebook, in the AlternativePhotography.com group, but again it seemed like folks were getting a very negative impression.

So, let me clear a few things up. I am not really discouraged by my results in teaching alternative processes. I teach them to my university students, I've done adult workshops for the Light Factory and been a visiting artist doing demos. No matter which group I'm teaching, I get basically the same results and reactions.

My students love alternative processes. They think the lumen print is magically amazing as the paper changes color right in front of their eyes. After just a few minutes in sunlight, they have ghostly images that came to life in full color. Cyanotypes are hands-on, easy and fast. Watching your first cyanotype develop is awesome, and everyone ooooo's when that cap of hydrogen peroxide finishes the development in a splash of midnight blue.

So why was I talking about how my students aren't going to continue using the knowledge I give them, and comparing alternative processes to archaic hobbies like whittling, baking and sewing? Well, because that's all true. My students enjoy the workshops and demos. They enjoy learning something new, and getting a chance to try something fun and out of the ordinary. During the demos, they're having a blast and really getting into things. They like coating the paper, get excited thinking about what they'll use to make their exposures. They like seeing the cyanotypes develop in the water, or peeling off the leaves to reveal their lumens.

I really enjoy doing my demos, workshops and lectures. It's just as much fun for me to show people new things, watch them have fun with chemistry and light, show off skills that are rare these days and maybe plant some seeds of further interest.

What I was talking about in the last blog was that after the demo or workshop ends, my students go back to their everyday lives. I don't get requests for further information, or emails asking where they can buy the chemistry to make their own cyanotypes. No follow-ups asking for good places to buy darkroom paper in order to make their own lumen prints. No questions about what kind of plants work best for anthotype dyes. It's possible that some students just google all that on their own and might very well be out there printing up a storm, but I don't think so.

There are blacksmithing demonstrations at the Renaissance Faire, and they're super-fun to watch. Despite that, there are not many blacksmiths. It's pretty awesome to go to a workshop or gallery class and glaze a clay pot. That doesn't mean you're going to become a potter. There are only so many hobbies a single person can have. Even simple ones that don't require a big investment of money or time (like the basic alternative processes) still take an investment of mental energy. Many folks just can't make that commitment. They're into paintball, soccer, World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, playing instruments or blogging about the best kind of plants for a semi-arid environment.

Personally, I took two courses in metalworking and became almost decent at basic silver- and copper-smithing. I truly enjoyed metalworking, and if I was given a chance to attend a workshop or demo, I would. However, I don't do metalworking in my spare time, even though I certainly could coldform copper pretty easily. I also very much enjoy experimenting with clays and dyes, even textiles. When given a chance to try something new out related to those interests, I do it. At some point, I plan on learning to make ragdolls. I'm not going to become a sewing expert, though. I'll probably never buy my own sewing machine.

Why is it so hard to get people interested in alternative processes? It really isn't. It's easy. They're awesome and fun, simple and pretty cheap. The hard part is changing someone's life so that alternative processes become part of it. Not everyone who goes scuba diving becomes a scuba diver. Not everyone that goes on a camping trip becomes a weekend camper. We, as people, generally enjoy trying fun new things. We even retain the knowledge of how to use them, and might occasionally want to do them a second or third time. What we don't do is incorporate them into our lives as cornerstones of how we express ourselves or spend our free time and disposable income. That is a big, big change to make in your life and such changes don't come along often.

So I don't despair when my students don't become alternative process enthusiasts. I don't expect them to. It'd be super awesome if one of them did, but that may not happen for years. It's already pretty rare that any of them become photographers, much less a particular type of rare and archaic photographer. That isn't bad. They're doing other awesome things, like growing flowers or riding bikes, or shooting people with paint.

Blogging for Thor: Whittling

Hello, Internet Spiders. You're doing well? That's nice. Let's talk, shall we? Yes, I also enjoy cataloguing the internet with my artificial awareness, but onto other topics.

I've been teaching for about three years now, and each time I teach my basic photography class, I offer extra credit assignments. They're simple alternative processes: anthotypes, cyanotypes and lumen prints. This semester, because I shifted things around, scanograms will also be extra credit. Not really relevant, but they're a non-traditional approach to image making. I teach these processes because they're easy things to do at home. They don't involve complex equipment, dangerous chemicals or anything else too crazy. No need for darkrooms. Most of my students are not going to become photographers. None of them are majoring in arts, they just want to get better at taking pictures, or they have to take an art class, or they just think it'll be fun.

Even the easy processes I teach probably won't get used again. Not even really simple one (anthotypes) that doesn't require anything at all in the way of exotic supplies. So, what is it about alternative processes that even attracts people in the first place? It's not the ease, the cheapness or the lack of equipment required. It's that they're fun to do. They're a hobby. Something you have an investment in, emotionally. The process is why they're fun.

Yes, the image itself is nice, but you can get nice images digitally. Digital is faster, easier, cheaper and uses even less equipment. With only a computer and a simple editing program, you can turn any photo into a gum print or cyanotype or whatever. Apply some filters, layers, whatever. It's easy.

We do alternative processes for the same reason some people whittle their own utensils, or sew their own clothes, bake their own bread or their own cookies. It's not because your bread is manifestly better than what you can buy, or is faster or cheaper. It's probably NONE of those. You do that type of work because you enjoy doing it. And if you don't enjoy doing it, if making bread doesn't make you happy, then you won't bake. You'll go to the store like everyone else and buy your bread.

I think that's why my students don't show much interest. They've got digital cameras and cell phones that can take better photos, way faster. The process doesn't really intrigue them. I keep showing them because maybe, sometime, I'll have a student that loves it and wants to learn more. I can't make someone enjoy something, I can only teach them how it works.