It's been too long

My blog hasn't started off too well, has it?  I've been busy with my son, trip to Krakow and lots n lots of college work.  Block 2 now over and my final block is well under way.  I'll miss it but i'm definitely ready to be finished.

Here's a couple of Diana F+ negs that I scanned this evening.  I did these on Ilford HP5, a film that i've since fallen out with.

Tonight i've been coating cyanotype and van dyke brown paper so hopefully i'll be doing lots of printing tomorrow.  My first Van Dyke test print is washing just now.  Need to get some negs sorted for doing more tomorrow night.

New deliveries

I've had a couple of new deliveries in the past week or so.

New paper - Arches Platine, citric acid, silver nitrate, gelatine, tartaric acid and a coating rod.  The coating rod is going to take a bit of getting used to.  The paper looks and feels great so looking forward to running some tests with it this week.

My new Diana F+ Black Jack.  I've put a roll of 400 HP5 through it this week and looking forward to developing it this week when i'm in college.

Basic Tea Toning

We had no internet yesterday so I thought i'd try some basic tea toning using some cyanotypes i'd made to run tests on.  I only ran a very basic test, using 8 tea bags in 1000ml water and left for 20 minutes.  I'm really impressed that household tea can have such an effect.  There are many other toning techniques I want to experiment with but this was an easy one to run as I always have lots of tea in the house.

I'm still waiting for my Silverprint order, it will hopefully be dispatched today.  I ordered it in the week between Christmas and New Year so it's understandable that it's not here yet.  I'm looking forward to having a play around and getting some paper coated for returning to college next week.

In the meantime I need to find a supply of nitric acid.  Everywhere sells it in minimum of 500ml, I only need a few drops here and there for some of the toning techniques i've looked at.

Cyanotypes - my first attempts

Here's an example of one of my first cyanotypes.  Looking at it now, it's not great BUT it's an early attempt and there's a lot to learn from it.  When I first started using this paper, by Khadi, I really loved it.  Now I think it's a bit too textured so i'll never get my images as sharp as i'd liked them.  As part of my graded unit, I want to research paper so I contacted the makers of this paper to enquire about buying a sample pack of their various papers.  They didn't get back to me, therefore Khadi paper has now been crossed off my trials list.  I used the heaviest paper they do here and would have considered buying a pack of the lighter stuff but as they didn't give me any response at all, i'll look elsewhere.

This image is an HDR image, made into a digital negative and printed onto printable transparency.  There are so many reasons why purists would think this is wrong but i'm not a purist and am going to experiment with old and new to my hearts content.  There's a balance to be found and I just need to work out where my balance lies.

So, apart from the paper being too textured.  I probably need to work on my exposure time.  This is 50 minutes in a UV box at college.  It's single coated using the classic cyanotype recipe.  I need to run trials on single and double coating and more trials on exposure times.  I originally did this image starting at 1 hour 15 mins and gradually reduced the exposure time.  I think it could do with a reduction in exposure.  Whether or not I continue to try and get anything else out of this image needs to be decided.  It doesn't really serve a purpose for me at the moment with the exception of saying - this is where I am right now and this is what I still have to learn.

Beginnings

I've created this blog to track the progress of my graded unit for college.

I'm currently studying for an HND in Photography at Carnegie College.  Most people think that photography students are "up themselves" and know everything.  I don't.  I enjoy learning about photography and I enjoy the social aspect of being a photography student.  If I hadn't gone to college and had set about becoming a photographer off my own back then i'd never have discovered how great Alternative Process photography is.

So, what is alternative process photography?  There doesn't seem to be a set definition.  For me, it's about experimenting a mix of old and new techniques.

My love of Alternative Photography started in September 2011 at College.  We had a credit to achieve from a list of 7 or so subjects.  I couldn't decide which one and as I kind of enjoyed being in the darkroom I pitched up to the first class on Alternative Processes to see what it was like and got completely hooked.  The processes we were going to learn were using liquid light, lith printing and cyanotypes.

Cyanotypes is by far my favourite at the moment.

So, back to my graded unit.  The graded unit is exactly what it says it is, it's a unit that we get graded on.  We did graded unit in HNC Photography last year.  I did Landscapes, it was a real challenge as I was pregnant for pretty much the entire college year so getting to some of the locations I wanted to shoot at could be difficult.  But, challenging ourselves is fun right?  Life would be boring if there were no challenges.  I was thrilled to get an A for my Graded Unit.  HNC Graded Unit was 10 images, this year in HND we are to do 20 images.  20 doesn't seem a lot but these need to be well researched, well shot and well presented images - all 20 of them!

My proposal for graded unit is to produce 20 images using alternative processes.  Some of these will be analogue and others hybrid (a mix of digital and chemical processing by producing digital negatives and contact printing using the old photography recipes).  My images are going to be split into 4 groups of 5 images that will work together as sets but also compliment each other as an entire body of work.  My subjects are: landscapes/ forests (lith), seascapes and beaches (cyanotype), old/ abandoned buildings (Van Dyke) and organics like grasses, flowers etc (salt prints).

So, over the next 2 college blocks, i'm going to be researching the recipes of these processes, purchasing papers, chemicals and other bits n bobs that i'll need.  I'll be doing my own paper trials although there is such a lot of information on trials that other people have done on the internet that I already know that Arches Platine is going to be the paper to go for.  I'll be out taking photos using my beloved Nikon D700 and my Mamiya 645 Pro (to think about 2 months ago I thought about selling her!). Another challenge here, if you'll refer to a couple of paragraphs above) is a certain 6 month old mini-me who will be accompanying me on some of my shoots when he's not with his grandparents.  To be fair he likes to be out and about and his pram makes a fantastic trolly for lugging tripod plus 2 reasonably heavy camera kits.

I've already started my research and have to say that The Book of Alternative Processes by Christopher James is an amazing resource.  I thought it was expensive when I bought it but it's most definitely underpriced given the work that must have gone into this book.  I've also spent hours on alternativephotography.com.  I've placed an order for paper and the raw materials I need to make up the chemicals.  My cyanotype solutions are all ready made up using the classic recipes.  I'm good to go with cyanotypes, all I need is good weather.