retina prints

for a few years now  have been making contact prints, and camera prints with just photo paper.

it started off as an experiment because i saw how easy it was to make cyanotypes, and i saw some absolutely
beautiful lumenprints by a photographer named bruce.  he made contact prints with plants and a heavy piece of glass on top
it was left in the sun, and the plant sort of bakes into the paper.  the print appears like a photogram, and through coaxing and toning
the image can be preserved.  they are something to behold …  i took a different route ..

instead of putting plants under glass, i just leave them on top, i don’t mind air spaces and depth and shadow.  i also put negatives on the
paper ( regular old photo paper ) and glass on top or in a contact frame  …  and in both cases images appear, but they can’t be preserved
seeing the plants or film didn’t bake into the paper …  so i scan the images to preserve them.  i also use cameras to do this sort of thing to.
instead of a small pinhole and leaving the camera open for 6 months i use a regular lens and leave the shutter open from anywhere from 30mins
to 8 hours.  again the images can’t be fixed, so i scan them.

today i loaded my graflex 3A postcard slr with a sheet of 5×7 paper and left the shutter open for about 30mins.

plants and windowbox

i inverted it to make it a positive image

windowbox and weeds

and a little while ago i added colors to the negative

weeds and windowbox
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