Image lab 3- Image Processes

Also in week five we spoke about work  by Taryn Simon and looked at prints with text at the side or underneath them for the Image lab 3 I was going to undertake.

My task was to either choose a photograph by a photographer, or work which I was going to produce in the workshop in week six, and put it onto Photoshop and create an image with text underneath talking about the type of print, size and context.

Here is an example of and Image process with text underneath http://tarynsimon.com/works_americanindex.php

I looked through some Aperture magazines to try and find some different prints. I found some very interesting information on prints such as Calotypes, salt paper prints and photolyphic engraving on paper in issues number 161 Specimens and Marvels, William Henry Fox Talbot.

During the Paris trip (week six) I stayed at home and continued with my work, there was a Cyanotype and Argyrotype workshop I signed up for. 

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue print. the process was popular in engineering circles in the Th century. the simple and low-costing process made it easy to produce large-scale copies of work, referred to as blueprints. Two chemicals are used in this process: Ammonium iron (III) citrate and Potassium ferricyanide.
http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/cyanotype/cyanotype-classic-process

Argyrotype is an iron-based silver printing process that produces brown images on plain paper. it is an alternative process derived from the Argentotype, Kallitype and Van Dyke processes of the 19Th century, but it has more simplicity, improved image stability and longer sensitizer shelf-life. 

The process may not perform in the way the other processes do, but it is much less costly and user friendly. It is a good first process to try. The sensitizer used is very slow, so printing must be by contact using a large format negative and ultra-violet light.
http://www.mikeware.demon.co.uk/argy.html

I had quite a few attempts with both Cyanotype and Argyrotype. I found that my favourite results came from the Argyrotype. So I decided to use one of the pinhole negative from the first thing we tried in Image Lab. I thought this would be interesting so that I could show progression and connection through this project. 

So in week seven, I decided to use the Argyrotype of my pinhole photo 

I scanned this image in on the flatbed scanners and attached it to the process template. After adding all of the text to the image and printing, I hung my work along with everyone else's in the Gallery.

I really enjoyed learning about the different prints as I looked at everyone else's work and I am going to take note of all of the different print processes that people have looked at and research some more on them.

After producing images in these ways I found a couple of interesting books- 

'Coming into Focus: A Step-by-step Guide to Alternative Photographic and Printing Processes' (by John Barnier), which has many different types of prints in and how they are made (chapter 16 page 209 is the process of Argyrotypes). The other book I found was titled 'Sun Prints' by Linda McCartney which contains different Cyanotypes.

Overall I feel this was a useful part of the course so far to understand and acknowledge for the future in the course and beyond. These techniques are all parts which will be added to my professional knowledge for the subject. I am going to look into these more and try some of them out.