First go at lumen prints

A while ago I accidentally bought a box of Arista Ortho-Litho 3.0 that was too big for my 4×5 film holders. (This film comes in two sizes, one that is cut down a 1/10th of an inch to fit in film holders and one that’s not.) It’s been sitting around since then gnawing at me to figure out something to do with it. So when I recently found out about lumen prints, it clicked.

Lumen prints are typically made by exposing photo paper to the sun for a long time, anywhere from a half hour to a day. The result is that the paper sort of auto develops and you get an image. Typically they are made as photograms with organic material on photo paper. But you can use a negative to make a contact print. And you can use film instead of paper.

My first thought was I would make contact prints and display them with a backlight. So here are my first contact prints, scanned and tweaked slightly. They look pretty good. I’ve sent them to be printed as 8x10s. Curious to see how they look. Next step is to build some cardboard frames for them to see if I can light them

Another option I am considering is making photograms and then printing them in the enlarger. I just need to scrounge up some material.

A horse of course

Lemons and pears

Lily

No Monsters

A Sunday afternoon along the Delaware in Port Richmond with the Fuji GW690III and some more Ilford OrthoPlus.

I guess the “port” is past tense

 

What’s around that corner?

 

This made me think of FABs

 

The great Tacony-Palmyra

Release Remote Control

I sometimes have difficulty talking about my work conceptually and tend to fall back on process.

It don’t look like rain

Summer vacations, Diana, and Kodak Ektar. Here’s some of the places I went this summer.

Ricket’s Glen, PA

Northampton, MA

There’s a river

Actually Amherst

Lonely bike

From the tracks

Chicago, IL

Wo ist die Brücke?

I shot some more Ilford OrthoPlus, this time in the Fuji GW690III. This is another camera I probably don’t shoot enough. But this film, I’m liking it. And initial darkroom experiments suggest it looks better as a lith print (images to come).

I took it down to Old City on a bright, cold day. I tried to avoid the usual Race Street Pier shots, and the streets were empty, so a lot of #peoplelessphilly shots.

Here is nobody under the bridge

 

Nobody here either

I think there are people in the builidng

I wouldn’t expect anyone here

Here is nobody in front of the bridge

Now

I thought that I would use the Ilford OrthoPlus in the Diana, but I am enjoying it more in the Rolleiflex.

Recently we had horribly warm January weather, so I took advantage and took a walk around South Philly with the Rollei. Maybe it was the weather or the fact that nobody is out on Sunday, but everything felt post-apocalyptic. The OrthoPlus fit that mood for sure.

I shot 4 rolls. Looking forward to printing these.

I’ve been dying to get a nice picture of S&S Foods for years

 

One of the few close-ups I took

Bricks, fences, and wires

I would raid this tools

This giant billboard dwarfed the daycare center below it

Weeds and tracks and trash

Artfully placed dumpsters

First try with Ortho Plus in medium format

I was super excited when Ilford announced that they would be releasing Ortho Plus in 35 and medium format. I’ve been looking for an orthochromatic film I could shoot in the Diana and this seemed like the perfect option.

Between Christmas and New Year, we took a trip up to Jim Thorpe, PA so I brought along some Ortho Plus and the Diana as well as my Rolleiflex to compare.

The low ISO for the Ortho Plus, 80 in daylight, limited how I could use it on this trip. Jim Thorpe is in a valley and the sun never really got far above the surrounding mountains. Then we had a couple of days of rain. Most of the shots I took came out underexposed. I did get a few passable ones though.

Jim Thorpe morning

 

Broadway, Jim Thorpe

 

The Rolleiflex was much better. I even got Nora to sit for a portrait. The skin tones with this film are nice, though not for everyone.

Lamp, of course

 

Me, by Nora

 

Nora, by me

These things

Last night I did a rough comparison of Foma MG131 paper and Ilford MGWT fiber paper in second pass lith. Not surprisingly, the Foma paper gives a slightly more lith look to the final result while the Ilford paper can sometimes look like a regular print. Here’s two examples.

Foma MG 131

I pulled this print a little early which gives it that partial brown tone. I like the colors and the happy accident of the chemical contamination.

Ilford MGWT fiber

This one almost looks like the original print, just with some mottling in the background.

Mermaids second pass

I tried some more second pass lith processing. These are all done on Ilford MG Warmtone paper. I developed them normally then bleached them back and redeveloped them in Arista lith.

Stepped down from the train

We visited Ambler, PA last weekend. It’s a place I spent a lot of time as a teenager. It’s also gotten cuter since then, unlike me.