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!