lightpotions

The purpose of this blog is to help me track progress, errors, successes and to exchange information with others who may experience similar technical (or conceptual?) problems while using alternative photographic practices. Previously I’ve kept a written journal and I’m sure that I will continue to do so, but this offers not only an alternative means of archiving, but also the potential to interact with like-minded practitioners.

I first began experimenting with historic photographic processes back in 1997 while a grad student at LSU, but the necessity for a larger, quality negative presented an obstacle I was unwilling to resolve. Much later when I was teaching at Diablo Valley College in California I began to print and assemble tissue boxes using Ware’s cyanotype (type II) formula and a combination of 4×5″ and 135 negatives. I enjoyed working at home on this and printing in the summer sunshine, but still only saw it as a niche process because of the limitations of my negative size. That all changed as I began researching materials for an alt. photo class I would be teaching the following summer (2006?). I read a good deal about digital negative production using an inkjet printer and began to experiment using scanned 4×5 negs and curves in Photoshop to print onto Pictorico OHP using an Epson 4880 printer. I found that I could produce good quality cyanotype prints at a satisfactory size (11×14″ or greater) using custom curves I derived from step tablets based on generously provided information from Ron Reeder (Digital Negative book and personal correspondence as I was attempting to perfect an ink density / curve for salted paper).

This began an enduring pursuit to produce my photographic projects using cyanotype, salted paper & especially gum bichromate (which is mostly what this blog will center around).