I did manage to finish and bring those FOUR prints to the framer (gallery owner) so that I can enter them in the next juried contest that is coming around. The framer, who also has a frame/gallery place in NYC tells me that this kind of print is very hot in the city right now. That makes me super excited.
The actual images are about 8.5 inches tall and 5.5 inches wide. The papers that I printed on are 15 high by about 11. They look nice. I like the wide border. Also, I finally got the whole centering the print thing figured out.
This process involves printing a photo on a transparency using a regular photo quality inkjet printer. Then exposing a metal plate coated with a light sensitive gel polymer (did I just lose you?) under lights to both the photo transparency and a uniformly gray transparency. I wash off the coated metal plate, the dark parts of the image wash away, I dry and re-expose the plate. Then I ink it up and wipe it down and place it on an old fashioned press, lay some paper on it and "pull" the print, which is cranking that heavy roller over the paper so that the ink transfers onto the paper. Lastly, I cross my fingers, and lift the paper off of the plate, and examine the print to see if I got the exposure times right and probably I need to tweak the amount of light times a bit and start all over until I get it right. When I finally get it right, I can pull a bunch of prints off of the properly exposed plates to edition my print.
It's a time consuming process. That's something I like about it. I used to love getting lost in the process when I was in the darkroom. I remember printing and printing until I realized my back was breaking only to discover I had been in the darkroom for 5 or 6 hours and had missed dinner and it was dark out ...... This could happen to me with this! Only this time around I don't end up smelling like stop bath which is a very good thing. I sometimes think about those dark room chemicals and worry. This process is allegedly non toxic. Even the inks I am using are non toxic. I wear gloves just in case, though. Inking those plates gets messy.
Here is one of my stories for you.
I wanted a 35 mm for the longest time. I asked my parents for one for years. They asked WHY? and I told my mom I wanted to take good photos. She said my 110 camera took good photos. Finally I got my 35 mm camera for my birthday my senior year in HS. My dad and I went off to a big real photographer type camera place in Boca and we spent all this time talking to the lovely salesman who eventually sold us a fabulous very basic Pentax K 1000, that I love to this day. I was smitten. I starting taking photos of my friends, and had no idea what to do with them. I went off to college number one, there were no photo classes. I dropped out. I went to local college number two just to get some good grades and prove to myself I was ready to go back to college full time, no photo classes, then I went to final college and realized too late that there were photo classes, the class was at capacity. I begged the professor to let me in and he said that if I came to the first class and still wanted in at the end of the class that there would be at least four people dropping the class and he would sign me in. I went to that first class, where I could barely contain my happiness and sit still while the professor went on and on over how much work we'd be doing that semester and how much time we'd have to spend in the darkroom. Sure enough 4 people immediately dropped the class and I went to the professor with my add slip and the professor smugly smiled at me and said "You still want to add this class?" and I came back with "Do I look like I'm afraid of a little hard work?" I declared myself a photo major during our third assignment.
I the whole lengthy multi step process was part of the thrill for me. I love generating that kind of focus. It's as if the world around me quiets down while I delve into this place of my brain where things make sense. There is order in a composition, and sense in finding the right shadow depths and highlights details. I always say that I think it's mathematical, but I can't explain what that means.
Wow, Click, I can just feel your passion coming off the page. I grew up with the smell of a darkroom in my nose, and I spent one year in art college, so reading this has brought back many memories... and it makes me want to get creative again.
BEAUTIFUL PRINTS, I especially love the first one. And I'm crossing fingers for you for the contest.
More! More!
Posted by: Pippa | October 27, 2010 at 12:46 AM