New Bible To Alternative Photographic Processes!

I have been quietly waiting for my copy of Jill Enfield's Guide to Photographic Alternative Processes. It came the other day and I am delighted to share with you the fact that I have a tiny little entry in this amazing book.
I would like to thanks Jill for using one of my Lumens and adding me to the "Fugitive and not so Fugitive Printing" section, it really is an honour to be part of this and if you haven't got your copy yet and you are into this more experimental side of photography, I suggest you get yours now, it is busting with information.

The Photgraph that has been used was made a while ago using a Lumen on film technique. I found the colours absolutely brilliant when I first tried this.

Arts Festival First Weekend

I am again exhibiting at Grow Mayow Community Gardens this year as part of the "Little Greens" for Sydenham Arts Festival The first weekend has gone really well and the two workshops I did were well attended and I believe from the responses of those that attended that they "Loved it" "Wow""What a cool workshop" and ""That was the best way to start my holiday"!

The first workshop Camera Obscura was designed so that everyone would come away with a working Camera Obscura so that they could either use it to take photos through like TTV(through the viewfinder) so that you get lovely dreamy inverted images or if you were a child doing it you could come away with what could be a very cool looking steampunk telescope once finished with papier maché. I forgot to take pictures during the actual workshop but some SAF photographers had done so, I just await their images...

here are some post workshop of a couple using them.

The second workshop held on the Sunday was again well attended and we all sat outside in the glorious sunshine making Matchbox Pinhole Cameras, a little less taxing and not quite as hard on the hands the cameras came together as expected and I'm looking forward to seeing the results if any from those that came, I just hope they send some in to me. The cameras were all finished and promptly used in the gardens after discussing perspective exposure hand holding them and multiple exposures amongst other things.

Here are some of the people making and using their cams!

Whilst I was doing the workshops I was also exhibiting in this space and when I first saw the room I was a little dubious, it had an incredible amount of detritus inside as it was normally used as a children's science/playroom but after seeing the back wall and the wallpaper that was covering it I just couldn't resist. It was moths large brown repeat pattern moths in a faded gold, the edges were distressed and the paper curling but it just seemed right to use this space. It looked ideal to become an installation as well.

Here is another picture of me setting up:

My Ephemeral Moth series would look perfect in here it would hopefully not be lost but would look captured, it would be part of a large room of caught objects and ephemera including all my other lumens.
 The exhibition is still up and I hope to get more interest and feedback this weekend. I had some really fantastic comments and new subscribers, sales and promise of exhibition space and calls for more workshops. I managed to sell cards and books... fingers crossed for this weekend and let the sun be kind again as I need a lot of doing an oversubscribed Lumen Printing workshop!

New Toy Camera Blog Feature

There is a wonderful new Toy Camera blog by José Manuel Madronna and I am very happy and delighted to be a  featured photographer on the site. Toycamera.es is going to be a treasure trove of Toy Cam images in no time at all, featuring some brilliant practitioners of the plastic lens. Already online are Becky Ramotowski Diane Peterson and Mauricio Sapata, all with their highly individual take on creating a photograph.

Blur Magazine SP03 Honoured to be featured!

I am really delighted to be featured in the Pinhole section of the current issue of Blur Magazine 30. I would like to thank Mauricio Sapata for giving me a call and this wonderful opportunity. Blur Magazine is a beautiful online publication consistently high in the production and choice of photographers. I am honoured to be included.

Work in Square Magazine SP03

I am really pleased to tell you that I have work in Square Magazine SP03 March 2013, many thanks to Christophe Dillinger for the inclusion in this wonderful edition.
These are just some quick screen grabs!

Right hand page is mine, it was made a while back while concentrating on a project called 'Transcience' about the figure in the landscape.

Facing Up to a project

More experiments from the summer. I was doing rather a lot of lumen prints and while at a festival had been looking at all the tents around me and I was chatting with friends.

I had been looking at someone quite intently for some time and then I looked away and stared at the side of the bell tent, I had a 'vision' an afterimage so clear that since we had been discussing the Turin shroud and how the oils etc may have created the image on the cloth it seemed only fitting that I would try and recreate this apparition as a lumen print. 

I don't have particularly oily skin but seeing as it was high summer and we were slathered in sun cream I thought this would act as a suitable barrier.

The second image has just been auto corrected in PS to bring out the image more nothing else was done. I do actually like the original image and I was quite pleased with the way the face appeared.

So I used grade 1 Ilford paper and got my subjects to start on one side of their face and roll the paper to the other, much like the cloth would be if draped over a face. These were then put out into the sun for four hours under glass. My subject for the first image had a moustache and beard and this can clearly be seen on the paper.  The dark areas are where the sun has managed to reach the surface of the paper and it started to change quite quickly. 

 The first image was not as strong as hoped for but this was also of a child and quite small on the paper, once it was corrected it was only slightly more visible.

I did however discover that sun cream and emulsion doesn't do great things to your skin, it was a bit like kissing a battery and so I didn't redo the childs face!

                                         

This is an image of my face, it was rolled and so looks enormous,  the image was stronger before it was fixed but I managed to pull out some of the contrasts when corrected. I like the ghostly image though. It is just easier to see the results in the corrected ones.

The last images of this series from the festival are again mine but I shall endeavour to capture more from willing subjects!

                                           

This last image I think has really worked, though not necessarily very complimentary, it clearly has form.

Deceased Experiment Unexpectedly Terminated!

Over the summer I started doing a number of experiments using the process of Lumen Printing.I have been doing Lumens for some time and also doing small workshops but this summer I got the opportunity to do some experiments for myself. One of them was a rather spontaneous affair. I was presented one day with a mouse, a dead one, our cat is young and doesn't quite get the hunter thing and so has only just started using his 'skills'


This poor little corpse had been placed in quite a ceremonious way in the centre of a circular patch of earth in our garden(post paddling pool)

Well, what was I supposed to do with this gift, It seemed only fitting and appropriate that it joined the selection of flowers and moths and other ephemera being Lumen Printed in the garden. The little body was laid out on a sheet of BW Ilford Ilfospeed grade 1 paper and a sheet of glass laid upon it's delicate little form, much like the lid on a coffin made for Snow White!

The first image was set out for a day, I don't really know why I just didn't do the normal few hours but I think the sky was a little dull. Subsequent images varied form a day to actually being left for ten of them as I forgot and went on Holiday. It did not seem to do that one any harm.

Each time the mouse was moved it was carefully slid across onto another piece of paper so as not to damage it, though after the second day it was more like a popsicle on its very stiff tale than I would have imagined.

My original intent was to record the whole process of decomposition from day one, until it became skeletal and the print would have just had a selection of bones surrounded by flora, unfortunately this has been cut short by the intervention of some rather desperate and inconsiderate animal with a serious lack of discerning taste buds. One morning I came out to find that after almost four weeks or so of work the contact frames that had been lying out in the sun had all been turned over and the photo paper was strewn all over the garden. It wasn't the wind, as no interest had been paid to the other prints as they were not containing rather smelly decaying 'meat' believe me I searched around for them but they had gone.

I was a little dismayed as the body was reducing and it would have been great to see the intact skeleton but maybe this is too macabre. I was so focused on producing the prints and creating a series, anyway I have ten images of this mouse.

I had also been 'given' another to work with but that too had gone and so it was back to the flora and fauna and insect world for me until I am graced with another one from my mad cat.