After yet another several days of living in the darkroom, I emerge victorious (this time) with a finished carbon transfer print. This is the result of using a very thick "glop" that's lightly pigmented, highly sugared, under-sensitized, and severely over-exposed. Check out this relief...
As the Spring weather warms up and the days grow longer, photographers in the temperate Northern Nemisphere begin to come out of their hibernation. Soon after, large groups of these odd creatures will meetup at random places all across the continent, to get together and share their knowledge of photography. Often times, they're share their previous year's trappings, demonstrate learned, successful techniques, and take many pictures of each other; a strange phenomenon, indeed.
The elder and tribal leader (left) is often seen asserting his dominance by use of a much larger 7x17 camera. Fascinating!
One of these peculiar meetings of photographers takes place this weekend, May 11th - 13th in Bath, OH. Be forewarned, though, this is no ordinary group of shutterbugs. Most of them shoot film, have crazy large cameras, and have work worthy of museum collection. Should you wish to witness some of this madness and more, look ahead at their forum posts on APUG. As a recent inductee into this nomadic flock of photographers, I'll be demonstrating a technique that's been popular with me this past year, Carbon Printing. This demo is completely free, inquire to the above link for details.
Stay tuned, as images and maybe even some video from this meeting of photographers will be making their way onto this blog soon.
Quite a few things have been going on here since last week's little instructional video made its debut.
First and foremost, the weather outside has been frightful, compressing available shooting time to half-day spurts of creativity. I'm half way into my first and last box of Tri-X 8x10, and so far it has done as expected. Were it not 2x pricier than Ilford HP5+, and a special-order-only product, I may have switched back to Kodak stock for 100% of shooting. Unfortunately, though, that is not the case. Five more barbershop shots on this Tri-X and it's back to HP5+. I'll miss the bit more speed of TXP (pyrocat hd gives slight loss of speed), but definitely not the price!
Second on my plate is the upcoming Midwest Large Format Asylum Portfolio Review. A funny name for a funny group of large format shooters, but they're all really great guys. I met a large chunk of them last summer at Photostock 2011, and from the looks of things, I may not only be the youngest guy attending this meetup, but I may also be shooting the smallest camera! To add even more pressure to uneasy feeling of showing a bunch of seasoned LF veterans my portfolio, I promised these gentlemen an all-carbon-print portfolio, and darnnit' that's what I'm gonna' give 'em!
While we're still on the topic of carbon printing, I received in the mail a brand new, custom made coating rod from R.D. Specialties out of New York. They're great folks to deal with, and through a little help of the Carbon Transfer Group, started by Sandy King, I was able to find all the information I needed to get just the right size formed rod to coat my own carbon tissues. Fourteen have already successfully coated, five already printed, and with a good twenty* more coated and done by Friday of next week. (* hopeful estimate). For folks out there still scratching their heads about carbon transfer printing, below you'll see an embedded YouTube video that will fully demonstrate the insane amount of time that goes into a simple contact print. Trust me, once you see one in person, it's worth it!
Fourth and finally is some even more funky, out of left field news. I just got in the mail today 100 sheets of Agfa Green Sensitive X-Ray film! That's right, the same kind of film we all got to view our first broken bones on can be used in view cameras to make negatives for contact printing! Since the film is a little more quirky than modern panchromatic (most of our visible spectrum) emulsions, it gives a more early 1900's look, with it's biggest advantage being sheer economy. You're not going to believe it until you see it, so click HERE. Your eyes don't deceive you, this film only costs $0.28/sheet in 8x10!! With my most commonly shot films coming in ~$4/sheet in B&W and ~$12/sheet in color, it's easy to see why giving X-Ray film a try was the next logical step in shooting more 8x10 film. Expect regular updates in this area, I plan on exploring every inch of this wallet-friendly film!
Well that's it, I'm off to the darkroom to carbon print for hours and hours and hours. If I get too bored, don't be surprised if you see YouTube video show up (below) on the carbon print process
Have a great weekend and long live film!
Update on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 10:17PM by
Mat Marrash
Well here it is, I got bored, and just as promised, a little video from today's carbon transfer printing session! For the record, it was a great overall printing day, I went 7/9 on prints, the other 2 not even making it to the sensitizing stage as the carbon tissue mysteriously cracked while drying.
More videos like this to follow in the coming weeks!
Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 4:30PM 