Tag Archives: hand colored photographs

ARAX60 !

Aug

2018

by jnanian | 0 Comments

it seems that i have been asleep at the wheel for the past 8 months but i assure you i haven’t !

its been a really strange new year ( to say the least ) and i have handfuls of stories to tell …

i bought another ancient rolleicord ( i never can afford rolleiflexes ). i had one for a while years ago

but sold it to a friend and regretted selling it almost as soon as i dropped it off. its funny, my first MF camera

was an old kodak reflex that was my uncles, i used it in high school and when my cousin needed it i sent it back …

then in college i scraped my $$ and went to an old camera shop a few miles away called “king arthur’s camera shop”

and bought a used yashica mat 124G and LOVED it. well i loved it until i ran out of money a few years later and sold it to

a good friend along with armloads of 120 film. yup i regretted it soon after she drove off! fast worard a few months ago

and the MF bug bit me again … i got another ancient triotar lensed rolleicord but IDK it didn’t have a flash sync so i sold it to

someone in NYC for the exact price i paid ( i tend to do that ) and found me another rolleicord through the

photrio classifides … it had a flash sync and has been a lot of fun to use. its a rollicord V as much fun as it is,

i LOVE not having to look DOWN all the time. left is right , right is left its not hard to figure out but i’d rather just look and not have to think..

i was bitten by the keiv bug…

well, not really the keiv bug but the ARAX bug.

keiv cameras have a rich history in the soviet union. based on western or eastern europen brands they did their own thing

and they were OK .. but here in the west i guess OK isn’t good enough !

then there is ARAX … these guys got the best of the keiv cameras and rebuilt them … fixed the light leaks, fixed the mechanisms

that might have been flawed …

i had my sights on an arax cm, basically refered to as a “hasselbladski” because it is a russian copy of a early hasselblad. i scoured ebay

and for sale listings and eventually realized thatwhile it is a great camera, well, with something that sophisticated,

there are usually things that go wrong, so instead … i settled on a arax 60 and to be honest i couldn’t be happier !

i was sooo close to ordering it right from the arax factory, but i found a seller here in the states who i knew and he was as excited

to sell it to me as i was to buy it ! he sold it to me with the original standard lens and some close up “tubes” … but i had heard about

the mythical qualities of the sonar lenses … so i ended up getting some nice deals on a pair of sonar portrait lenses … not sure

if i can say they are mythic, but they are nice and do the trick !

i’ve made some portriats with the camera and some general photographs and can’t be happier with the results.

not to say i won’t use my rolleicord from time to time but for now the arax 60 is doing the trick !

new brutalist detail
arax 60

almost torn down, hand colored arax 60

Posted in Misc. Also tagged arax, black and white, caffenol-c, traditional photography |

late summer photographs

Aug

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

just a taste of what i have been doing lately.

it includes using a cyclone #3 and empire state …

as usual, i have been off the beaten path, i ended up in west greenwich at the plain meeting house

and also found myself at the abandonned and partially redeveloped lonsdale mill complex. i’ve been to both places

before, but its been months. i also found myself at home photographing closely.

cyclone #3, caffemol C + faux dektol

trailer truck along building, overcast sun peeking through

Posted in photographs Also tagged black and white, caffenol-c, cyclone, dektol, hybrid, paper negatives |

latest tinted images

May

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i have been exposing film without processing it for about a year now. i had about 20 or 25 rolls of assorted black/white and color
35mm and a couple of rolls of 120 film. i also had about 30 sheets of assorted expired color and black and white 4×5 sheets. i had wanted
to process the film months ago, but i’d cut my finger or something random so i couldn’t. i am not someone who wears latex or nitril gloves when
i process film, i know i probably should, but when i process sheet film i can’t feel the sheets to pry them apart, and it makes it extra hard to shuffle
them in a tray. i suppose if i used a hand tank, or still used hangers / tank, or a unicolor drum it wouldn’t matter much, but i put film in a tray and shuffling them from bottom to top, over and over again, first in water, then in developer for whatever amount of time i need to, and then in water and then in fix and while i have attempted to use gloves, it just didn’t work well. i always use them when i make cyanotypes, both coating and washing. and i sometimes use them when i coat stuff with liquid emulsion. … anyways …

so i processed about 5 rolls of film and all 30 sheets on sunday.

they were all from last fall. some local stuff, some things i made when i was out of town.

there was a regatta when i was in boston that saturday. i don’t remember which day it was, i just remember it was sunny and cloudy and cold.
i parked by MIT and walked across the street with my box and made a handful of exposures. then i drove to magazine beach and did the same sort
of thing.

black and white negative, hand tinted in photoshop

black and white (4×5 ) negative, tinted in photoshop.

Posted in photographs Also tagged black and white, dektol, delmar, hybrid |

quebec sun prints

Apr

2017

by jnanian | 0 Comments

a few summers ago i went to quebec
i have wanted to make prints from the digital files, and the other day
i finally got a chance to do it.

the images are from a contact sheet made via photoshop, and inverted
and saved as a PDF file. i brought it to my local copworld
and they made me a handful of overhead transparency images.

i grabbed one and a sheet of expired photo paper put them both into a contact frame and
put them out in the sun. i’ve come to the conclusion the longer the image stays in the sun
the less it will fade when i scan it. after a day or 2 in the sun i peeled the photo paper from the xerox negative
and scanned it. the image is dark purplish brown on the paper, and i barely adjust the levels to bring it to “normal”

my scanner glass is dusty and scratchy so most of my time is spent removing that …

a couple i hand tinted in photoshop the others are as-is.

statue in quebec
hand and bowl

cannons at fortification colored in photoshop

graffiti

old buildings cobble streets

Posted in alternative process photography, photographs Also tagged hybrid, nikon, quebec, sun print, xerox |

TMY retina image

Dec

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

as i have been making long exposures again

here is another one on kodak tmax 400 film

this is a very long exposure, reversed negative tweeked levels and color removed and then tint added in photoshop

multi hour retina image
reversed tinted with photoshop

Posted in alternative process photography, film development technique, Misc., technique and style Also tagged retina, traditional photography |

straight, untinted, unpainted cyanotypes

Oct

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

been making more cyanotypes lately … and have been using paper that is probably gettng close to being dead. it takes a long while to make exposures, and sometimes the color bleads out but that is OK, it is fun cheap and easy to make more sensitizer, something i will be doing probably in the next week or two. i’m not quite sure what recipe i will use. maybe i will use the 2x green : 1x ferri, maybe i will do something in between, i’m not quite sure. here are a few from ongoing series – tools and things nearby.

just a hatchet

hand wrenches some big some smaller

before they changed color

i made this retina print while i was making the hatchet cyanotype. they were both the same very long exposure. i loaded the graflex 3a up with some hand coated paper as a negative ( 2 4×5 sheets ) .. one didn’t make it, the one i fiddled with i was able to show the “invisible rays of light” usually talked about with the origins of photography

photograph of a photograph being made

Posted in alternative process photography Also tagged crescent wrench, cyanotype, garden, hardware, hatchet, leaves, retina, tinted, wrenches |

emulsive

Sep

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i thought i posted a link to this but i guess it got away from me.

i was interviewed by emulsive.org a little while ago about film and emulsion and what i am up to. in case you don’t know about emulsive org what i am up to here is the link what’s emulsive.org ? feel free to go there, its a pretty interesting site

well worth the click !

I am John Nanian and this is why I shoot film

Posted in film development technique, technique and style Also tagged cyclone, dektol, dry plate tintypes, dry plates, film, paper negatives, photogram, rockland colloid, sumatra, traditional photography, tricolor, waxed negatives |

hand tinted

Sep

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

this is a hand tinted image of a tree &c down the road from me. it was made with either a 8×10 or 11×14 paper negative, i can’t remember which one, but it was run through the empire state … after scanning the image and inverting it, i added some colors.

hand tinted from large format paper negative

the wind blew at the coast, the leaves rustled and starlings flew away

Posted in technique and style Also tagged caffenol-c, paper negatives |

more recent cyanotypes

Sep

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i haven’t been using a camera much these days. i have film to be processed (probably 10 rolls ?) some taken a while ago, some taken since the spring. i haven’t gotten around to processing it. not to mention i have some liquid emulsion ( foma and AG+) to use up and i eagerly anticipate making some of my own chlorobromide emulsion again with some nice hard bloom gelatin. instead of camera negatives i’ve been waxing paper negatives made from rubbings ( like the last entry ) or things made as a photogram, ( always a favorite ) or better yet, paper xerox negatives that i wax and have fun with …

a few years ago i got a bad case of food poisoning while traveling in france and when i got home i had some film to process, and a few memory cards with images on them. i was kind of messed up from being sick when i got home ( until i wasn’t ) and while i found one of the memory cards’ images, i am still kind of looking for the other. i took some of these images specifically for converting to paper negatives and into cyanotypes. i had done this with rubbings and digital images before, and it seemed like a great way to make digital images into hybrid black and white negatives. so i desaturated some negatives, and inverted them in PS and put them 4-to a 8 1/2 x11 sheet of xerox paper … heated up an old pan and waxed the paper … in addition, to a big sheet of cyanotype paper, i had a handful of envelopes i coated a handful of months ago, and they were eager to be printed on.

i made some photograms using kitchen-stuff and crayoned and watercolored the images. i don’t know what size envelopes are, but they are the perfect paper for making cyanotypes. nice and long and narrow, like a panoramic negative !

anyhow her eare some of the images i made …

hand painted and black/white photogram

black and white + color photogram

black and white + hand painted photogram

black and white+ painted photogram

Posted in alternative process photography, technique and style Also tagged black and white, cyanotype, traditional photography |

recent cyanotypes

Sep

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

just made a handful of cyanotypes lately using paper coated and left in a light safe in a humid basement for the last 7 or 8 months. the paper was not the best but it worked (sort of) made some photograms ( some i watercolored ) i made a contact print with a waxed rubbing and tinted it in photoshop and i also converted some digital images into black and white negatives on xerox paper and waxed and printed them.

i have some more negatives to print and cyanotype paper to use up before i mix new.

rubbing waxed negative

photogram, watercolors

photogram, watercolors

photogram, watercolors

waxed paper negative

waxed paper negative

photogram, watercolors

as usual most of my work is on imagekind ( jnanian.imagekind.com ) feel free to browse. through the end of september

i will be donating a portion of every purchase ( 70% ) to relief efforts in louisana.

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, technique and style Also tagged "home made emulsion", black and white, cyanotype, paper negatives, photogram, photographs, waxed negatives, xerox |

photo illustration sort of, PS colored photo reconstruction

Jun

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

a while back i made some paper negative from hand made emulsion the negatives were more like a collage of things, images, textures, brush strokes. i decided to scan big and crop small and the image i retrieved from the paper was a sweet photograph of trees and a fencepost, but it always seemed to be missing something whenever i looked at it. i put it aside for a good 6 months and looked at it a little bit more once i had distance from it

railing and trees

the other day i spent a handful of hours working on it.

i enlarged the canvas, i added colors ( which was i originally had hoped to do )

anyways, i worked and worked added, and subtracted and came up with this

reworked image

it took hours, and it really still isn’t completely done, but it was fun making something that never really existed.

Posted in alternative process photography, images on hand coated paper, liquid emulsion Also tagged black and white, caffenol-c, dektol, paper negatives |

wait 9 month or a year and see what happens …

May

2016

by jnanian | 0 Comments

i admit it, sometimes i don’t want to process film. i get tired of standing there and agitating, or shuffling sheets in a tray in the dark. i started doing stand development because i didn’t want to deal, my version of stand development only lasts for maybe 1/2 hour if i remember to come back in time, sometimesit lasts even more. i use the same develop my every day film in, sumatra coffee, washing soda,vitamin c and some dektol. i shake the bubbles off and leave. sometimes i put of processing film for a few weeks or sometimes i am not very good and put it off for a few months, 9 or 10 months this time.

the film sat in a ziplock bag for all this time. i would process sheets, i would develop paper negatives, i would make contact prints, even make emulsions and developers from scratch, coat things, and develop them, but i wouldn’t process the rolls of film. i’d think about it sometimes

film reels cyanotype with watercolors

finally i processed the film, at least, some of it. i had about 15 or 20 rolls to get through, and i made it through 9 of them. i loaded the film into the metal reels. it took a while since i was out of practice. some reels roll easier than others, and for the first time in a long while i had a few areas touch and not develop. that’s ok. after the film was hung and dried and sleeved i began scanning them. i will eventually print them but i figured scanning is as good a way as any to see what i have, so i scanned, and scanned and scanned. i remember most of the photographs, sort of. but not really. it was a nice feeling to have distance. there wasn’t any sort of importance or need or “i have to see this or that” they were just negatives.

i remember seeing a show on garry winogrand years ago and how he exposed the film and left it for a year or more before he processed it. ( i think there were 10 thousand rolls of film to process after he died. ) and i can see why he did what he did. the distance adds to the editing process. there isn’t a ” this exposure is going to be SO GOOD !” and process the film 20 seconds after it was unloaded. the film is just there and ready when you are, if it is good, its good, if it is bad, you probably don’t remember even making the photograph, so it is OK.

these photographs are from a handful of long walks i took. sometimes they were made walking home from my mechanic;s place abotu 5 miles away. i took 3 differnt routes home. some were taken on the way or way back from picking up beer making supplies. it was a road i used to travel often with a camera but no so much anymore. time sat still and the places were virtually the same.

anyways … it’s ok to leave film for a while before you process it,

it mght even be a good thing.

colored black and whtite photo

shadow and textured wall

retina print

Posted in Misc., photographs, technique and style Also tagged black and white, traditional photography |

paper negative fun with an empire state 1A

Apr

2015

by jnanian | 0 Comments

I’ve been on the lookout for a back for a camera i bartered for years ago. the camera is a century 8 grande portrait outfit

(photograph courtesy of historic camera.com a great website if you like looking at “old stuff” or want to see what you have )

http://www.historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium/pm.cgi?action=display&login=century_8

anyways when i received the camera it came on an ornate semi centenial stand ( without the film holder rack ) and the camera came with an 8×10 back. i eventually made a 11×14 back for the camera out of foam core and waxed paper, and a paper negative holder as well. it worked like a dream. i just had to load each sheet separately, no big deal unless i wanted to take more then one photograph.

eventually i purchased a 7×11 film back and holders which i mounted on what was the mount for the 8×10 back. and that worked beautifully too, but like the 8×10 is about 1/2 the 11×14 negative, the 7×11 REALLY is half the size. 11×14 is such a giant negative i have wanted to get back to shooting that format for a long long time.

recently i found an inexpensive back and a couple of film holders. if you have ever priced anything large format, you know inexpensive is a relative term. about a year ago i found a back, broken and in pieces that someone wanted to sell to me for a more money than i had to spend. i don’t have very much money so i passed and figured eventually i would find something a little more for someone with a shoestring budget. well, it happened a few weeks ago. i got a back and holders, and it came with a camera and a 8x1o back as well. couldn’t have been happier seeing it cost less than the amount for something broken !

the camera arrived in the belly of a greyhound bus. just don’t ship greyhound on holiday weeks where there is a lot of bus travel, people and their luggage get first priority. i brought the giant box home and unpacked it. about a day later i had the camera cleaned up. after 10 years in a box in someone’s basement it got kind of dusty, and dirty. i reglued parts of the film holders back together too. it didn’t have a ground glass ( focusing screen ) so i went to the local home goods store and had a piece of plexi glass cut down to 11×14, and i sanded it and sanded it, and sanded it until it was scuffed up enough to work as a cheap piece of ground glass. i figure if i sometimes use waxed paper scuffed plexiglass would work fine. it cost me less than 12$ and about 5 mins of time and saved me probably 4-5 times that. i clipped the corners and inserted the ground plexiglass.

first i made a retina image. i wanted to see if the film holders leaked or the bellows were a mess.

the image came out really nice, so i desaturated it, and added my own color since i like doing that sort of thing

2 hour exposure, expired photo paper

the other day i decided to load up the other 11×14 film holder up with paper, and a a 8×10 too.

i made a few kitchen window photographs

onion and limes and dirty window

scrubby and window light

with an assistant later in the day we made some portaits.

legs

counting to 20

looking forward to taking the empire on the road, and using the back in-studio

Posted in Misc., using vintage equipment Also tagged 11x14, black and white, paper negatives |

coffee cups

Dec

2014

by jnanian | 0 Comments

originally …

i made 4 exposures, 1 with NO filtration and 3 others ( RGB ) and i was going to make a trichrome image of these coffee cups that look like stacked bowls but i ran into a little trouble. while i love making exposures and i love processing film, i had no way of identifying the negatives after the film was processed. i suppose if i was some sort of superhero i could look and know what was what, but there is too much stain in the film for me to be able to see which is which. this can sometimes be a problem when processing 36 sheets of film at a time, and they get a little jumbled up 😉

so, instead of spending hours trying to ID the film, or making many many attempted trichromes with photoshop like some sort of mind bending puzzle i decided to take one of the images and hand color it, 4 different ways. i used christmas colors and had some fun.

so, here are a few hand colored photographs.

hand colroed black and white

feel free to poke around on imagekind if you see something that you like they are less expensive than me making the prints by hand 😉

Posted in Misc., technique and style Also tagged caffenol-c, film, tricolor |

colorized providence

Oct

2013

by jnanian | 0 Comments

part of a show i will be part of in providence.

i thought i would hand color a few for fun

excessively contrasty negatives are great for colorizing !

colorized power plant

Posted in alternative process photography, film development technique, photographs, technique and style Also tagged black and white |

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