shot on ilford delta pro 100 film with the Mamiya RZ67, scanned, adjusted in photoshop for contrast, dodging and burning, spotted with healing brush for dust, and cropped.  printed on duralar coated with a custom mix of ink aid clear gloss pre-coat and golden acrylic flow release then wet transferred to Rives BFK watercolor paper.  the distressed edges and some of the white spotting are a result of the randomness of the transfer process.  model and paper backdrop did have a fair amount of talcum powder for texture in the original shot.

this will be on display at the show i’m doing with Bill Earle at Three Little Pigs, 131 North High Street in West Chester, PA.  show opens Friday, March 5, 2010 at 7pm.

Dominique - Embryo, Wet Transfer

My friend Bill Earle and i recently submitted works for the Nude and Draped Figure at the Chester County Arts Association. The Chester Count Daily Local News had a nice write up about it in their weekend section. The article appears below. (Highlighting by yours truly!) The article is also linked on-line here.

Chester County Arts Association Looks at the Figure - Chester County Daily Local News

a sampling of some images that were processed entirely in the new Aperture 3.  that is with the exception of the fact that i cleaned up the backdrop on the first studio shot in Photoshop because it was quicker to clone/heal out the dirt and stray hairs on the floor than it was to do it in Aperture.  the clone/heal brush in Aperture is still a bit slow to work with.

otherwise, the presets are a joy to work with and the maskable adjustment layers are really what this application needs.

Brooke - Tibetan Stool

Sweet Romance - New White

Sweet Romance - Window Light Outreach

Sweet Romance - Solar Flares

i really love trying to pull myself out of my comfort zones.  and working with the slightly unpredictable nature of a polaroid camera that chooses exposures for me is almost certainly uncomfortable.  my camera is almost always in manual mode.  i tend to have a sort of a 6th sense about exposure and reading the light.  and not knowing exactly what a camera is giving me requires a fair amount of trust in the equipment.  but the truth is that the look that comes out of a Polaroid camera is in a large part determined by the electronics and metering designed into the cameras back in the 50s and 60s.

so i put  brooke in front of the windows and let the electric eye do its thing.

Brooke Lynne - Polaroid Pack 1, Frame 10

Brooke Lynne - Polaroid Pack 1, Frame 9

an emulsion lift is one of the really interesting things you can do with a polaroid print after it has been developed.  the process intrigued me and now that i’ve got my hands on an honest-to-goodness polaroid, i had to try it.  i’ve got a vision of a series of shots i want to do when Brooke Lynne comes to town next weekend.  but its hard to do something like this without at least practicing first.  i am frequently surprised at how quickly i can zero-in on the root cause of a problem and fix it, especially when it comes to photography!

the emulsion lift process typically involves soaking the polaroid print in hot water for a few minutes and, like magic, the emulsion will start to separate from the paper.  for the polaroid 664 film that i was using, it takes water a bit hotter, so you’ve got to soak the print in boiling water for up to 15 minutes.  my first few attempts at this didn’t go very well.  while the emulsion started to peel away at the edges of the print, it didn’t release totally.  and trying to pull the thin emulsion from the paper caused it to rip.  and once the pieces of emulsion are separated from the paper, they’re thin as jellyfish and getting them back together is nearly impossible.  the emulsion is so thin and light there’s almost no way to actually feel when you’re touching it.

but i did have one print where the emulsion seemed to lift much more easily and i tried to deduce what was different about this print.  at first i thought it was that the print had a lot less shadow areas where there was less dye impregnated in the emulsion.  so i tried another print that had less black in the emulsion.  but the emulsion on this print refused to lift as well.  and then i realized that the real difference was that i used a much shorter development time with the prints where the emulsion lifted easily .  so, i did an experiment with some of the remaining frames from the pack.  i developed these prints for only 30 seconds instead of 45 seconds.  i let the prints dry for a few hours and when i tried to lift the emulsions, they came off with out any problems whatsoever.  bingo.  now i had a process for making this work.

however, its never really over until the process is truly complete as i just found out while fiddling with the completed transfers.  i’ve been applying some diluted acrylic gesso to the transfers to help adhere them to the paper.  however, this can cause problems because the emulsion seems to shrink as it dries, bending the paper and separating the emulsion from the paper in the middle.  attempting to flatten the image only cause the emulsion to rip and tear.  it seems like i might be able to solve this by bathing the paper and emulsion in a cool water bath prior to final adherence to the paper.  this would allow the emulsion to shrink naturally before it is applied to the paper.  back to the drawing board in a sense…

First attempt at a Polaroid Emulsion Lift, the emulsion ripped and this was the only part of the image i could get onto the transfer paper.

A later emulsion lift. Only part of the emulsion tore this time.

The most successful lift, even after drying, this print is mostly in tact and can probably be salvaged after a soak in some warm water.

my mind has been in a bit of a whirling state lately.  as much as i love a good shoot, i’ve really just been wanting to make prints and such with the photos i’ve already got in my library.  capturing digital shots or even shooting film is really just the first movement in a photograph’s performance.  ultimately, they all should be printed and presented.  that’s why i’ve been working on building up my darkroom again and making a UV printing box (more on that in a later post).

but i’ve also been intrigued by the idea of trying to get my hands on a Polaroid camera and experiment with instant film.  there are lots of creative possibilities for transfers and emulsion lifts as well as just the look and feel of a Polaroid print.  i had a couple of disappointing losses on ebay where i was out-bid on auctions for used Polaroid cameras, but recently i managed to win a Polaroid Automatic 250.

the only real problem with the camera was that the battery was corroded onto the contacts inside the battery compartment. and the battery that it originally used was a 4.5 volt that isn’t even made anymore.  a post to one of my regular photography forums  provided a quick answer and i was off to radio shack to look for a 4xAAA battery holder.  i had to use a dremel tool to remove one of the 4 battery compartments from the 4-battery holder, then re-wire the holder slightly to get 4.5 volts out of it instead of the normal 6 volts you’d get from 4xAAA batteries.  i kinda suck at soldering, so a few hours later i had power to the camera and it seemed to be making reasonable estimations of shutter speed to control exposure.

the film was actually quite a bit more expensive than the camera and i was really reluctant to load any into the camera until i had something really compelling to shoot with it.  but ultimately, i decided to shoot a pack of 10 frames just so i could get a feel for how the exposure system worked with the camera (it’s all-automatic, no manual override).  and as you’ll see in the next post, this was a good idea.  some of the more experimental techniques i wanted to  use with the exposed prints would require some practice before trying them on real pieces of artwork!

Original Polaroid Automatic 250 Battery

Newly fabricated 3xAAA Battery Holder for Polaroid Automatic 250

New battery holder in place!

The Polaroid Automatic 250 and some packs of film

i worked a while back on setting up a shoot with a model that i found to be very expressive and we talked about working with some clay. the idea was to cover her head-to-toe and work the dried and cracked skin textures. it really came off much better than i’d expected. i’ve been sitting on these for quite a while and wanted to share them with you now.

model: miss anthrope

miss anthrope - clay study no.1

miss anthrope - clay study no.2

andlostwithoutyou thisroomseemscoldandempty bringmebackthepiecesofmybroken heart

Beth - Aloneagain

so, as many of you might know, i’ve been shooting a lot of film lately. and while scanning the negatives, sharing the results on-line, and making some high-quality inkjet prints is great way to get feedback on my work, that wasn’t the ultimate goal. ideally, the negatives should be printed in a traditional darkroom using silver gelatin papers. the thing is though, i have a very nice enlarger, ample room in my basement. the only thing that really holds me back is my incredible knack for clutter in my daily life.

Clutter in the laundry area of the basement

this area of the basement is somewhat small, but larger than most people’s closet darkrooms. with its access to a sink next to the clothes washer, it means that i don’t have to pay a plumber to come in and charge me a gazillion dollars to install a new sink. the only problem, of course, is all this crap laying around. in this clutter there are scraps of wood tacking strips from when i pulled the carpet up 2 years ago to reveal the lovely hardwood floors on which i’ve been know to shoot a nude once or twice. there were random tools and tool boxes, laundry detergent, product boxes, plywood pieces from a disassembled entertainment center (holy cow, i hated that thing!).

when i woke up this morning i decided it all had to go.  it didn’t take long to really get things going.  it wasn’t the greenest thing i’ve ever done, but let’s say its going to be an epic trash night this week!  i threw out bubble wrap, packaging cushions, there’s tons of corrugated cardboard being recycled, lots of product boxes (really, why was i saving the box for a shredder that i bought 5 years ago?!?).  i cut up the larger boxes and saved the sheets of cardboard for packaging when i ship prints to clients and collectors.

more clutter, packaging scraps, and shipping boxes

around lunch time i went up stairs and made a little fire in the fireplace.  there were months worth of brown paper packaging that comes with many shipped items.  i used it all as kindling to start a nice wood fire.  again, not the greenest thing i’ve ever done, but it was nothing if not efficient and pretty!

after the lunch break, i started on the other room in the basement that leads to the closet where the old enlarger has been hiding for the past 9 years.  i wasn’t even sure if i had all the parts.  and there are some things that i know are missing and i’ll have to try to purchase replacements for them either on-line or through contacts with friends.

the enlarger is in there somewhere...

once the space was cleared and things were cleaned up a bit more, i had to clear off a utility table in the garage.  i bought several of these tables for pennies courtesy of the fire sale that happened when Lucent Technologies was crashing in and around 2001.  they sold off so many lab tables with nice industrial tops which would probably be perfect for the chemical hazards of a darkroom setup.

its now probably about 3:00 and i’ve got to break soon for dinner with the family.  the top of the utility table is filthy and needed to be scrubbed down, tape and labels removed with goo-be-gone, and the legs needed leveling since the floor in the basement is pitched generally toward the drains.  with all that done, i carried the Omega B8 enlarger over to the table.  parts of it had been disassembled for shipping when i moved into the house, so i tried as best i could to find all the parts in order to reassemble it.  i was able to locate the condenser lamp housing, filter drawer, and the negative carriers for 35mm, 6×6, and what i think is 6×9.  what i couldn’t find was the armatures for mounting the condenser lamp housing onto the enlarger.  this required a considerable amount of searching throughout the house.

its amazing to me how many boxes are still sealed from my move-in 9 years ago, but there, in a closet in my spare bedroom, at the bottom of a box of 800k floppy disks was a ziplock bag with the connecting arms for the enlarger.  bingo!  i’ve still got the original 75mm vivitar lens that came with the enlarger when i bought it from a friends father, probably back in 1991.  so, it seems to me there are only a few pieces missing at this point:  a good light source, preferably one of the Aristo HI23 cold light heads, a decent sized easel, an archival washer, and a good enlarging timer.  i’ve got lots of trays and chemical storage bottles and a pretty good know how of making nice prints.  but to me, at least now the hard part is done!

self portrait with Omega B8 Enlarger!!

getting access to the Bethlehem Steel plant is always something i’ve wanted to do and with all apologies to Machina Infernus, i always thought it would be with a nude model much better looking than these guys.  but thanks to some friends, we were able to have escorted access to locked buildings within the quickly decaying plant site and try to capture something and unique for a friend’s band.

the day started cold and grey with most of my friends south of here reporting a healthy accumulation of snow.  the storm was predicted to start in the lehigh valley around 3:00pm, just shortly after the time we would be getting started.  and of course as we were pulling into the facility, the snow started to fall.  large parts of the ceiling are missing in the building known as Machine Shop No. 2.  the falling snow combined with the cavernous machine shop and Rich’s steely gaze just brings home everything i love about photographer as an expressive art.

it’s all serendipity and being lucky enough to have the weather cooperate in ways that make for something special.  but then again, i really believe that if you surround yourself with the right people, good things will always happen.

enjoy,
scott

Machina Infernus - Machine Shop No.2