A few recent sun prints using inexpensive Xerox Transparancies.
Usually when people make digital negatives they use fancy printers, spend hours and days profiling their printer and image to look great. I don’t have a fancy printer or the skill to do fancy profiles, so I just invert in photoshop, and take the file to my local copy shop. Film transparencies are about 75¢ each and do what I need them to do.
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
i live not to far from the jewel of new england and have taken up making digital photographs
of the skyline, and soon to be the pre 1950s architecture … and making digital negatives at kinko’s copies i’m not quite sure which i like better small or larger i haven’t made a full 8×10 film negative yet, maybe with the right image it will look nice, as is, i have made contact sheets and 1/2 8x10s the camera has no issue, it would probably work OK even with a cheap cellphone snappy, i’m certain film negatives would look great too.
here is the latest …
sun print digital negative
long view industiral natinal bank
tower of the industrial national bank building
industrial national bank
chimneys and roofs
hybrid xerox negaive
working on a new project i am going to call electric midnight blue it uses a varient of the sunprints i have been making these images were all made today in overcast sun in about 1-2 hours next group will be cyanotypes, and thinking of making them really big down the road .. for now they will be small
electric midnight providence
aside from sending rolls of 110 or 127vp to the local drug store or fotomat, or mail away to yorks i processed my own black and white film. when i was in high school i learned about developing film, and putting the developed, procesed black and white negatives into those plastic sleeves. for the better part of 10 years i put a sheet of photo paper under the developed film and exposed it in a bright light for a few seconds, and then into the developer and fix and wash like a lot of people, contact sheets were my go-to way of viewing negatives after they were shot, processed and ready to print.
i’d look at the sheets, and circle or “X” the views to print or not to print, and keep track of things. in some cases the contact sheet is all i have left after i had a flood and a bunch of my best negatives turned to clear film / emulsion soup. as time wen ton for some reason, maybe it was becasue $$ was scarce and i wanted to save my paper for prints, or because so many of my exposures were all over the place that a contact sheet would only show part of the story, or maybe i just got lazy, and stopped making contact prints. i got good at looking at the negative and seeing the print reversed. i saw the contrast and somehow decided it was good enough.
i miss making contact sheets, but unfortunately 27 years worth of procesed film to make contact sheets of ,or 4×5 or bigger negatives to make contact sheets of is a daunting task and i would rather not bother. back in the late 90s i bought a umax1200 scanner and it was fantastic. it did everyting i needed, and i think i still have it in a box. it was nice becasue i could scann all size film upto 5×7. and i started scanning film instead of making contact sheets and it worked out as a good compromise.
i use a couple of nikon digital slr’s as well as film, they aren’t new but a d100 and d200, they do what i need them to do, and i like that. when i make a bunch of exposures i still make contact sheets of them believe it or not, sometimes they are postiiveprooof sheets, and sometimes they are negatives. today i wandered around the streets or providence ri, and have plans for digital negatives. i worked on the frames and turned them into contact sheets to bring to the xerox shop. im not a machine gunner, i don’t click and look except once in a while to make sure the meter was working. the camera is set to 1 frame at a time and i take my time as if i am using a film camera. if i had a film camera i would have shot just as many views and sat on the curb or stone wall to unload and load the camera and maybe i would have runout of film. i’ll be heading out to staples tomorrow to see what is what. my local copy shop charges 10x what staples charges for regular copies, so whilei want to support my local shop im not that rich. i’ll be getting paper as well as OHP film to see if there is a difference and making cyanotypes soon.
walkabout
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