Alternative Photography
This is a mix of Film photography and other alternative methods to digital photography. Several works are featured such as Cyanotypes, Photograms and more.
Cyanotypes
It starts by mixing the chemicals together and painting the paper with it, preferably a 250 gsm or more paper, and letting it dry. The chemicals consist of 10g Potassium ferricyanide and 25g Ferric ammonium citrate which are in powder form and separately mixed with 100ml distilled water each and then equally blended together. Besides paper there is also the option of choosing other materials like fabrics. Once the paper has dried one can set up the objects or in this case we even used digital negative, onto the paper and place it in the sun. As for the amount of time it should be left out depending on the weather. On a very bright sunny day it should be enough for it to be left out for 15 minutes but in a cloudy day it could be given around 30 to 45 minutes of time in the sun. After the paper has been exposed it rinsed in cold water and the image will start to come out clearer. There is also the option of putting it in bleach to slightly lighten the paper and even improve the image. Based on my research on Cyanotypes, for further experimentations, the process could also be used on coloured paper or use different chemicals like detergents or cooking ingredients (Fbbri M., 2010).
Photograms
This one like many others includes the use of the darkroom and some chemicals. What happens is light sensitive paper is exposed to light when an object is placed on it. The creates the effect seen below, the black is the exposure of light and the white is the object blocking the light. The paper is exposed with and enlarger which can be set in different F stops and for different amount of time. An enlarger is not a necessity for simple experimentation as one can use a simple torch. The specific paper below was exposed on f8 for 10 seconds. After the paper is exposed to light it is dipped in 3 separate chemicals. First it goes into the developer for a minute and a half, moved to stop for 30 seconds, in the fix for 4 minutes and lastly washed in water and hung up to dry.
Film Photography
The following images were taken using a film camera.
When I first started shooting with a film camera, it was about documenting my time out with friends and experimenting to get a hang of it. A simple point and shoot is quite compact to keep on me. Sometimes I feel that film photography gives more value to the image because you have to be very picky on he scenes since it's a '1 time shot' and you can't see the image.
Unfortunately, I do not develop my own film but will soon give it a shot.
