Van Dyke

History

Many believe that the brown printing process began with the research of JFW Herschel sometimes around 1840 when he formed an image with an iron sensitizer. Though this discovery was viewed as more of a series of laboratory curiosities and the real van Dyke Brown was invented in 1899 by W J Nichol. It happens when a photographic negative comes in contact with a silver-based emulsion and is exposed under daylight or ultraviolet light. This process is based on the iron-silver process argentotype.

The Formula

Solution A:

9g Ferric Ammonium Citrate

33mL Distilled water

Solution B:

1.5g Tartaric Acid

33mL Distilled water

Solution C:

3.8g Silver Nitrate

33mL Distilled water

Combine solutions A and B and slowly add C while stirring. This solution should be kept for a few days in a dark place. After that you can coat your paper evenly with the solution and expose it to sunlight or UV light. About 10 or 15 minutes should be ok. After that you can fixate your paper which will make your print darken as it dries.

This low cost process of producing photogenic prints is quick and easy and has become popular because of it. Toning effects can be achieved by using Kodak Polytoner, gold selenium, sepia, berg copper, or berg blue to make purple, pink, and blue. Though if you keep your print exposed to UV light it will eventually fade.

My Experience

I unfortunately was unable to experiment with the van Dyke process because I was out of town that day of lab class. If I am able to complete the lab during week 11 of the quarter I will post my processes and results but for now you can refer to my references sites as to how these prints should come out.

References

http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/kallitypes/vandyke-notes

http://www.lloydgodman.net/tech/tech/Alternative/Van1.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=0yUphQVKSwoC&lpg=PA107&dq=van%20dyke%20brown%20photography&pg=PA107#v=onepage&q&f=false

Cyanotypes

History

The process of Cyanotypes was brought about by an English astronmer and scientist, Sir John Herschel in 1842. He used this process to produce notes and diagrams for his work and called them blueprints. Anna Atkins, an English botanist and photographer, the reason this process was used in photography. Atkins being a friend of Herschel, took his newly discovered process and applied it to her seaweed collection. She began making contact prints by placing the objects directly onto the coated paper and then exposing them to light, creating a silhouette effect. By using this process, Atkins became the first ever female photographer.

As she continued making cyanotypes of her seaweed she published a book herself called Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843. This book is one of the first books illustrated with photographic images to be privately published.

The Process

To make cyanotypes you need 2 solutions.  The formula for this is:

Solution A: 25 grams Ferric ammonium (green) and 100 mL water. (8.1% solution)

Solution B: 10 grams Potassium ferricyanide and 100 mL water. (20% solution)

You then mix solution A and solution B together in equal parts. The solution is then coated onto paper and dried. Cyanotypes can be printed on any kind of surface that has the ability to soak up the iron solution that it is coated with. When exposed to UV light the iron(III) is reduced to iron(II) and has a complex chemical reaction with the ferricyanide to produce a blue dye known as ferric ferrocyanide or commonly, Prussian Blue. Prussian blue is one of the first ever synthetically made pigments.

After you’ve exposed the paper you develop the paper by rinsing off the unreacted iron clinging to the surface and then soaking the print in 6% solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide. This process, as well as drying it, makes the blue darken. After you’ve finished the cyanotype process there are additional processes of achieving different affects to your print. These include tea-toning, reverse or bleaching toning, and redevelopment toning. Tea-toning using 4-5 bags of black tea and the tannic acid reacts with the iron to change the blue to more of a navy blue. Reverse toning reduces the intensity of the blue tint of the print by using tea and a strong bleach ammonia solution to lift the blue pigment off of the surface. Redevelopment toning is done by soaking the cyanotype in a weak bleach ammonia solution and then into a tea mixture that replaces the blue pigment with a brown or yellow tint.

My Experience

First we started out by making the solutions and coating the papers. Then we placed our papers in picture frames with out transparencies and went outside for them to expose.

We exposed our papers for 25 minutes and it was a relatively sunny day. After washing out the papers in running water here’s what they looked like.

After 3 of the papers in the 3 different processes, tea, reservse and redevelopment, and leaving 1 paper alone, here’s what we came up with.

Top left: Reverse, Top right: Redevelopment, Bottom left: Cyanotype, Bottom right: Tea.

Links

http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/cyanotype/cyanotype-classic-process

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotype

http://www.photogs.com/bwworld/cyanotypes.html

Albumen

History

The albumen printing process was invented by a French photographer  by the name of Louis Desire Blanquart-Evrard in the late 1840’s.  Blanquart-Evrard was trying to find an improved process of calotypes Talbot had created.  Blanquart-Evrard presented his findings in 1850 to the French Academy of Sciences. Photographers caught on with his methods and by 1855 it was considered the most used printing process for creating photographic positives.

The albumen in egg whites was the key to binding the light sensitive chemicals to paper and  Blanquart-Evrard’s preparation was beating the eggs to a frothy state and adding a saturated salt solution, then letting the mixture sit overnight. He then dipped the paper into the solution so that it was floating in a shallow tray for 1 minute and then hung it to dry. After drying was complete the paper had to be sensitized with a strong silver nitrate solution and then hung to dry again. This process is very similar to the salted paper process but the use of egg white as a binding gave the prints a deeper and bolder exposed image.

 

The process

Using fresh eggs is important to preparing your albumen solution. One of the most renowned British photographers in the 19th century wrote:

Albumen derives its name from album ovi, the Latin name for white of egg. It exists most abundantly and in its purest natural state in eggs. It is one of the chief constituents of many animal solids and ……… Its chief characteristic is its coagulability by heat. … The albumen of the hen’s egg is the easiest of access. The eggs must be fresh, not more than five days old. They ought to be kept in a cool place. Those from the country are better than town-laid eggs, and I advise, where practicable, that the hens should have carbonate and phosphate of lime strewn about them to peck at. This enriches the albumen and renders it more limpid. Each egg must be broken separately into a shallow cup, and the yelk [sic] retained in the shell as well as the germ; then pour into a measure until the required quantity of limpid albumen is obtained.

Separate the yolk over a small bowl and putting the egg whites in a larger bowl. Then you beat the albumen with ammonium or sodium chloride til it’s froth-like. After hanging it to dry the paper should have a shiny surface to it. The amount of chloride you use is directly related to how sensitive the paper is. If you use a low concentrated solution (eg. 1-2%) you paper will be less sensitive and probably create images of a higher contrast. The type of paper to use is 100% (rag) paper because it provides the best results when working with the albumen process. Pour the albumen solution into a shallow tray because the paper will only be coated on 1 side and should not be immersed in the solution. Because hanging the paper to dry allows gravity to pull some of the coat to the bottom half of the paper other methods soon arose to fix this problem. The easiest and most accessible solution is to dip the paper in a 70% solution of isopropyl alcohol to coagulate the albumen layer. A second coating of albumen is sometimes used and, more times than not, creates higher quality images than single coated papers. After the drying all coats of albumen you float the paper on 10-12% silver nitrate solution for 2 1/2-3 minutes to sensitize it.

My Experience

We first separated our egg whites of 500mL then mixed in 3mL vinegar and 7.5 g NaCl. We strained the albumen through cheese cloth in a dish being careful we didn’t cause any bubbles. We also made a solution of arrowroot with 119 mL of water, 4 g NaCl, and 0.5 g citric acid and a solution of Gelatin with 125 mL water, 1 g gelatin, 2.5 g citric acid and 2.5 g NaCl. We used different types of paper with these different solutions to see what kinds of results we’d get. We applied the gelatin solution to 2 pieces of watercolor paper (2 coats), the arrowroot was coated onto 2 sheets of canson paper (2 coats), and 4 papers (2 canson, 2 watercolor) were coated with the albumen solution.

  

We then placed the dried papers into picture frames with our transparencies and exposed them outside.

My Results

Horrible. This lab was very confusing and aggravating. Because it was the first time we had to make these solutions and the professor wasn’t in class to give us the right directions things got screwed up. I was also trying to improve on my coating technique and the above images show the spots I missed. I don’t think I can fully comment on the results I got because honestly I can remember if I coated the papers right or not. Luaren, Allison and I were completely confused the day we were coating papers and because the professor wasn’t there we completely messed up the lab as a whole.

Links

http://albumen.conservation-us.org/library/monographs/masters/the_albumen_print.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albumen_print

http://albumen.conservation-us.org/library/monographs/reilly/chap4.html

Camera Obscura

History:

The earliest this device has been known to exist was in the 5th century BC by Mo-Ti, a Chinese philosopher, who witnessed the “creation of an inverted image formed by light rays passing through a pinhole into a darkened room.” He dubbed this room his “collecting place”.

Somewhere between 384-322 BC, Aristotle was using a version of a camera obscura to view the sun as a projection on the ground during an eclipse. For this he was able to view it through the holes in a sieve or between the leaves of trees.

Even Leonardo Da Vinci mentioned it in some of his famous notebooks where he gave clear descriptions of how they work.

The phrase “camera obscura” came about by a German astronomer named Johannes Kepler in the 17th century.

Camera Obscura is a dark box or room with a hole in at one end of it. The hole had to be small enough to see an inverted image to be seen on the opposite side or wall. As the “pinhole” is made smaller the image being projected gets sharper in focus, but at the same time the image becomes dimmer because the amount of light being let through is smaller. Later, camera obscuras were made with lens that allowed bigger apertures to make the images brighter while keeping their sharp focus. A lens is an optical device that refracts, or bends, light to converge or diverge. Aperture is in reference to the size of the hole at which the light is passing through to project the image on the camera obscura. Aperture is often called the focal ratio, f-ratio, or more commonly f-stop.

Early models of the camera obscura was rather large is size, as big as a room or tent but by the 18th century they were made more portable by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. Robert Boyle was a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist and inventor who was noted for his writings in theology. Robert Hooke was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath who contributed in the scientific revolution through his experimental and theoretical work.

My Experience:

My experience with the camera obscura was pretty simple. Give the lens I was to use I first measured how far I could get away with a sharp image being projected on a surface.

I measured a little over 3 inches so I found a small box that recently got delivered to me because I purchased something from amazon. I cut out a small opening on one end to fit the lens and also opened up the top. I used a dark piece of construction paper to tilt upward so i could view the image and thus I had my camera obscura.

Resources:

http://brightbytes.com/cosite/what.html

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/cameraob.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_(optics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Boyle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke

Salted Paper and Photogenic Drawing II

The History

Invented in 1839 by William Henry Fox Talbot, a scientists with interests in optics, chemistry, botany, and art.

This camera less process started by soaking writing paper in sodium chloride, or table salt and letting it dry. Then brushing a strong silver nitrate solution on one side of the paper. While the paper is still wet, expose the paper with your object on or close to the paper. Exposure could have taken anywhere up to an hour to fully develop. Talbot stumbled upon a discovery in September 1840 to drastically cut down the exposure time to 1-3 minutes. He tried to re-sensitise some paper that failed to expose on some of his previous experiments and as he began applying the chemical the image began to appear. Talbot thus named this process “calotype”.

These processes are known today as “salted paper prints”. Talbot’s process went from just coating the paper with silver nitrate which gave him a metallic silver image. He then tried coating his paper with a salt solution right before coating it with the silver nitrate to get a much stronger image on the paper.

The recipe for this salt solution is:

2.0 grams Sodium Chloride

100.0 mL Distilled water

The recipe for the Silver solution is:

12.0 grams Silver Nitrate

100.0 mL Distilled water

My Experience

For our lab class we made 3 different solutions to coat our papers with. Arrowroot which included 4g arrowroot, 119mL water, 4g NaCl, and .5 citric acid. The gelatin solution was 125mL water, 1g gelatin, 2.5g citric acid, and 2.5g NaCl. The Albumen solution was made up of 500mL egg whites, 3mL vinegar, and 7.5g NaCl. After that we left the mixtures to sit for a couple of days until the next lab class. The paper we used was 100% rag. We dipped those into the albumen and hung them to dry. We did this for 2 sets of papers but one set only got 1 coating of albumen while the other set of papers got a second coating of albumen after the first coat finished drying. Wait for all the coats to dry before moving on.

We then took our transparencies with our negatives and used them to expose our papers. But before we did that we sensitized each paper with 2 coats of silver solution, dried it and placed it into a frame under our transparency. We then took them outside and had to wait around 10 minutes for them to fully expose because of the cloud cover that day. After they finished exposing we fixed them with hypo. I wasn’t able to get pictures of how they came out but because of the confusion at the beginning of this lab me and my partners results differed considerably. In some cases the albumen prints came out with the most contrast and sometimes they didn’t. Next time we do this lab I think we’ll need better instruction on how to mix and coat the papers but I still learned a lot during this lab.

We also had to expose our paper using different colored cellphane.

This was tested on plain salted paper and then exposed outside on a relatively sunny day.

Our results concluded that light waves traveled through the blue filter the most while red mostly blocked the light waves and yellow left the paper completely white. I think this is because blue light waves are considerably shorter than red and yellow light waves and they are travel faster.

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/talbot.htm

http://www.nndb.com/people/397/000098103/

http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/saltprints/a-dash-of-salt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_print

Photogenic Drawing – Exposing paper like it’s 1839

Invented in 1839 by William Henry Fox Talbot, a scientists with interests in optics, chemistry, botany, and art. This camera less process started by soaking writing paper in sodium chloride, or table salt and letting it dry. Then brushing a strong silver nitrate solution on one side of the paper. While the paper is still wet, expose the paper with your object on or close to the paper. Exposure could have taken anywhere up to an hour to fully develop. When you’ve reach the proper exposure, stabilise the image by soaking the paper in a strong solution of sodium chloride. You are then left with a negative of your image. Next treat a second sheet of paper with salt and silver nitrate as before. Lay the negative created on top of the newly-coated sheet of paper and expose to light. Wait for a positive image to appear and then stabilise it by soaking it in a strong sodium chloride solution like you did previously.

link: http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/features/ephotos/pdtypes.htm

link: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/1_early/1_early_photography_-_processes_-_photogenic_drawing.htm

William Henry Fox Talbot - inventor of photogenic drawing

My experience with photogenic drawings in class on March 23rd dealt with using different mixtures of sodium chloride and silver nitrate to produces varying results. The differing mixtures were as followed:

Low sodium chloride (2%) and low silver nitrate (5%)

High sodium chloride (10%) and low silver nitrate (5%)

High sodium chloride (10%) and high silver nitrate (12%)

Low sodium chloride (2%) and high silver nitrate (12%)

We added these mixtures to several different kinds of paper including 100% rag, Bristol board, watercolor paper, sketching paper, and canvas paper. Each with differing textures and consistencies and different chemical compounds that were most likely going to effect the exposure results. We were each in charge of a different paper and mixture of high versus low consistency of sodium chloride and silver nitrate. I was in charge of the low sodium chloride and low silver nitrate mixtures for all 5 kinds of paper. My results showed that the 100% rag paper and Bristol board were the most light-sensitive when exposed in the light box for 7 minutes while the sketch paper, watercolor paper and canvas paper proved less light-sensitive when exposed for the same amount of time. After  studying the results my other team members got with there different mixtures and paper I came to the conclusion that the more silver nitrate used over sodium chloride the more sensitive to light the paper became, depending on if the paper being used contained chemicals that didn’t interfere with exposure process. Our results didn’t necessarily prove or disprove which paper was the best candidate for photogenic drawing but it seemed that Bristol board, watercolor paper and 100% rag paper were the most effective in this experiment. Also after we removed the papers from the light box we soaked them into a strong solution of sodium chloride to stop the exposure process. This proves that salt solutions can hinder or even prevent the exposing effects of silver nitrate.

Anthotypes – The alternative, green way of making images.

Anthotypes was invented by Sir William Herschel in 1842.

It is a process of using natural plant substances that are light-sensitive and sunlight. Henri August Vogel stated in 1816, “An alcoholic tincture of either red carnations, violets or corn poppy turned white behind blue grass in a few days, while it remained unchanged behind red glass after about the same time. Cotton paper coloured with these tinctures showed the same differences.” The anthotype process was eventually abandoned from commercial use because of it’s days-long processing time and limiting results. Since the results almost entirely relied of the make up of the plant substance being used. http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/anthotypes/anthotype-process

This process can be done in several different ways but one such way is stated in L. L. Hill’s Heliochromy, “Take a small handful of the leaves of the red rose, violet, marigold, dandelion, dahlia, poppy and peony and mash them in an earthen mortar with about half a pint of alcohol. Do this by the light of a candle only. Strain off the colorized liquid and keep it well corked in a glass bottle, in a dark and cool place. In this way it may be kept good for months. To use it, spread one side of the paper with it, let the paper dry, and then spread it with alcoholic tincture of otto of rose–say one drop of the pure otto to half an ounce of alcohol. Let the paper dry spontaneously, and it is ready for use. It requires a prolonged exposure to the colored rays, but the resulting pictures are strikingly delicate and beautiful.”

 

My experience with using the anthotype process during the March 9th lab class went as followed. For me and my 4 other group members we used a mixture of mashed raspberries and differing amounts of alcohol. These mixtures ranged from 100% raspberry and 0% alcohol, 90% raspberry and 10% alcohol, 80% raspberry and 20% alcohol, 70% raspberry and 30% alcohol, and 60% raspberry and 40% alcohol. I ended up using the 90% raspberry to 10% alcohol mixture and so far my paper has been exposing but as a slow rate.

raspberries-a-la-mashed.

Just finished painting our raspberry mixtures. Now cutting our shapes

0 weeks into sunlight exposure.

2 1/2 weeks into sunlight exposure.

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