Lumen Printing
School at USU started on Tudesday, and we had our first demo yesterday in class. I'm teaching a basic photography class, and I have about 20 students.
Their first assignment is to make Photograms, a form of making an image without using a camera. There is a derivative of the Photogram called the Lumen Print, which I myeslf only recently became aware of. I thought it was cool, and wanted to try it out. It worked so well that I'm having my students do a Lumen Print as well as a Photogram for their first assignment.
Anyway, the basic idea is that you place objects on the surface of a piece of black and white printing paper, and expose it to UV light. Usually the sun is on during the day, so I used it. You can use any materials, but apparently using 'organic' materials work better. Also if there is moisture associated with said material, it raises the success factor quite a bit.
I went out and bought some fruit and a fish (a Tilapia...yummm....), went to 2nd Dam and pulled some seaweed out of the water and went back to the darkroom.
Laid it all out in a somewhat 'artistic' composition and placed it in the sun for two and a half hours.
There are two ways that the Lumen Print makes a mark. The first is by the actual shadow that is cast, the second is by the contact with the organic/liquid material.
The exposure to the sun self-develops the image, and all you have to do is seperate the objects that you placed on the paper from the paper itself. Water works well.
Once you've gotten all the 'stuff' off, then you fix the print and wash it as normal.
The interesting thing about this process is that you can actually get a very wide spectrum of color from a black and white piece of printing paper. Very neat.
Here are a few shots during the process. The print is hanging to dry in my darkroom up in Logan. I'll post the final print when I get it flattened and scanned.
Enjoy!
Their first assignment is to make Photograms, a form of making an image without using a camera. There is a derivative of the Photogram called the Lumen Print, which I myeslf only recently became aware of. I thought it was cool, and wanted to try it out. It worked so well that I'm having my students do a Lumen Print as well as a Photogram for their first assignment.
Anyway, the basic idea is that you place objects on the surface of a piece of black and white printing paper, and expose it to UV light. Usually the sun is on during the day, so I used it. You can use any materials, but apparently using 'organic' materials work better. Also if there is moisture associated with said material, it raises the success factor quite a bit.
I went out and bought some fruit and a fish (a Tilapia...yummm....), went to 2nd Dam and pulled some seaweed out of the water and went back to the darkroom.
Laid it all out in a somewhat 'artistic' composition and placed it in the sun for two and a half hours.
There are two ways that the Lumen Print makes a mark. The first is by the actual shadow that is cast, the second is by the contact with the organic/liquid material.
The exposure to the sun self-develops the image, and all you have to do is seperate the objects that you placed on the paper from the paper itself. Water works well.
Once you've gotten all the 'stuff' off, then you fix the print and wash it as normal.
The interesting thing about this process is that you can actually get a very wide spectrum of color from a black and white piece of printing paper. Very neat.
Here are a few shots during the process. The print is hanging to dry in my darkroom up in Logan. I'll post the final print when I get it flattened and scanned.
Enjoy!
posted by Michael at
9:45 AM
1 Comments:
I should show you all of my lumen prints that I did. I have some on my blog, but digital reproductions just don't match the original print.
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