Negative

1  Under red lighting best quality writing paper is dipped in weak silver nitrate solution, followed by potassium iodide solution, and wiped dry.

2  One side is coated with an ‘exciting’ solution of gallic acid and silver nitrate, applied with a brush. The sensitised paper is then dried  in  front of  the fire, and  placed  in a light-proof  holder to take to the camera.

3  Exposure  in the  camera  for  about  1-3  min.

4  Development,  in the same exciting solution as 2 but diluted  to  half strength.

5  Fixing in hyposulphite of soda, washing and drying.

Positive print

6  Another sheet of paper is soaked in salt solution and wiped dry.

7  Under red light it is brushed over with silver chloride solution, and dried.

8  Pressed in tight face contact with the negative in  printing frame, the paper is exposed to bright sunlight until it forms a strong brownish image (about 20 min).

9  The print is fixed, washed and dried.

PDF: Calotype process

Chronology of historical development of photography.

PDF: Chronology

Cyanotype Process

The cyanotype process or blue printing was discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1842. Ifs first extensive use was in a book of botanical photograms of British algae by Anna Atkins. Around the turn of the century prepared blueprint paper was available to photographers for making proofs. The process was also used to produce postcards and stereographs of the period. The process never gained any real popularity and so was primarily used as a copying process (as engineers and architects do now). …

PDF: Cyanotype Process

Cyanotype Printing Process

The cyanotype printing process , commonly known as ‘Blue Print’, was invented in 1842 by the English astronomer Sir John Herschel, who wanted to create a method by which he could copy or reproduce his calculations and notes. It is one of the oldest and most permanent printing processes. Because this process is simple, inexpensive, and has clear line-production, it plays an important role in the industrial field today as a method of reproducing documents and line drawings. In addition it was also popular among photographers…

PDF: Cyanotype Printing Process

Out of the Blue

Barbara Curtin explains her method for creating cyanotype prints…

PDF: Out of the Blue

Unusual tonal rendition giving creative and dramatic images…

PDF: Dramatic

The term high and low key refer to the dominant prevailing tones – light or dark – used in a picture. A high key photograph consist mostly of white and light tones and some middle tones, whereas a low key photograph is composed predominately of black and dark tones. …

PDF: High and Low Key

Infrared, photographing the unseen (or simply create very interesting) images.

Discover where a circuit board may be overheating  - where hot water pipes are buried in masonry – and where heat loss is occurring through a building’s' roof.  This would be an ideal use for infrared film. However: let me quash this myth right  now! You cannot, under any circumstances, photograph heat loss with an infrared film. Infrared film can see the visible spectrum and also the near infrared up to just under 1000 nanometres.

PDF: Infrared, photographing the unseen images

Infrared Alert

Creative photographer are always challenging conventions and looking for new ways of coming up with eye-catching images. To kick off the brand new series on Pro Techniques, Lee Frost takes a look at how to get the best out of using infrared film.

PDF: Infrared Alert

Many  photographers feel somewhat restricted by conventional, commercial papers.  Surface textures are limited and do not always suit the artistic vision of the individual. One way around this  limitation is by using liquid emulsions, which can be coated onto many surfaces: paper, fabric, stones, tiles, wood, metal, and more. …

PDF: Liquid Emulsion Technique

The development time determines the amount of  shadow detail. As the development  progresses,  dark grains begin to appear in the shadow areas, clumping together to form the darkest regions of the print. It is  important to decide when to snatch the print from the developer by Judging the shadow density – rather than the highlight detail. … In order to make successful lith prints you must use a chloro-bromide based black and white paper. …

PDF: Lith Printing

Almost any image from a printed source can be transferred to paper. The best source of material for transfers is a full-color Sunday newspaper supplement. The inks are highly saturated and freshly printed. The paper stock is a light­weight newsprint, and if you wish to transfer duplicate images, you can purchase cheaply several news­papers. …

PDF: Magazine Transfers and Lifts

The photojournalist generally responds to a situation, whereas the studio photographer creates a situation to fit a pre-conceived image. The ultimate control that the photographer has is the manipulation of the image itself. At its most sophisticated, the photographer can take on the role of an director. By combining studio techniques with photo-composites and re-touching, for example, you can achieve the graphic freedom of an illustration yet retain the basic realism of photographic images. Sophisticated image manipulation such as this is found mainly in advertising, where the commercial results justify the often high cost and lengthy  technical work.

Combining images: by Sandwiching, Projection, and Multiple exposure

PDF: Manipulating the image

A photogram is a picture made without using a camera; it records not the image of an object produced by a lens but the shadow cast by the object itself i. e. using the photographic printing process but without using a negative. They tend to be strong-silhouetted images. With experimenting you can create a fairly intricate image using marks, shapes and textures. …

PDF: Photograms

The only real limit to this technique is your imagination. With photograms you have total control over all the elements and you aren’t dependent on the weather. …

PDF: Technique File

It’s pants!

Using the age-old technique of photograms, Kirsty Mackay creates images of underwear, from the sensible to the saucy. Sarah Jackson takes a peek. …

PDF: It’s pants!

Albumen print

The first glossy coated photographic print. In general use c. 1855-1890.  Thin paper was  first coated with a mixture of whisked egg white and salt, then sensitized with silver nitrate.  It was usually printed-out in sunlight under the negative in a printing frame.

C-type print

Photographic colour print made from a colour negative: the most widely-used form of colour photograph today. …

PDF: Photographic Processes and Terms

Pinhole photography is photography at it’s most basic. In terms of equipment, materials and the physics of light it couldn’t  be simpler.  It is the grounding for all photography.

Materials Required:

Cardboard box or any blacked out container that you can fix a pinhole to and hold light sensitive material i.e. film or paper.

Thin sheet of shim or soft drinks can to make pinhole aperture out of.

Pin and light emery paper.

Black and white photographic paper and or sheet film.

Other materials required may be black paper or black paint, gafa tape and masking tape, knife, scissors …

PDF: Pinhole Camera Workshop

How to Make and Use a Pinhole Camera

By using common household materials, you can make a camera that will produce pictures. Making and using a pinhole camera will acquaint you with the basic elements of photography while providing an inexpensive and interesting way to take pictures. This bulletin explains how to make and use two types of pinhole cameras-a cartridge pinhole camera and a can or box pinhole camera. You’ll be proud of the pictures you can take with the camera you have constructed.

PDF: How to Make and Use a Pinhole Camera

Strictly speaking solarisation is reversal, or partial reversal, of the image due to gross overexposure. The effect discussed here, although described by photographers as solarisation, is the Sabattier* effect or ‘pseudo-solarisation’. Whatever the name, the effect is easily distinguished – the reversal of weakest densities, and the formation of a thin contour line around strong tone boundaries. It therefore contains some of the characteristics of the tone line effect, but is achieved quite differently. …

PDF: Solarisation

Making a solarised print

i)  Selecting an image – This should be a bold image with a strong pattern. The image could contain blocks of differing tone or strong graphic lines.

ii)  Make a test strip – Using grade 4 or 5 makes a high contrast test strip. If the negative will not give you a high contrast print choose another negative. …

PDF: Making a solarised print

There are a number of photographic processes which enjoyed great popularity in the early year of the century. In some the actual photographic print formed only an intermediate stage in the production of the final image. Typical examples are carbon processes, the carbo process, and the bromoil processes. Of these three, the bromoil process is probably easiest to master, in terms of technique and availability of suitable materials. …

PDF: The Bromoil Process

Although far more people could now take photographs, for most of  the first half of the twentieth century photography really meant pictures in black and white. Everyone now expects to have colour prints from their holiday a few hours after returning home, but 60 years ago a skilled photographer would take several days, at great expense, to get one colour image on to paper.  Reaching today’s position called for tremendous re­search – firstly to establish the best principle on which to base a system of colour photography, and secondly (even more difficult) how to put it into practice so that it was simple,  inexpensive and gave high quality results. Hundreds of systems for ‘natural colour photography’ were put forward, often by fakers and fraudsters. Fortunes were lost trying to launch processes which only partly overcame problems and contained some fatal flaw. …

PDF: The Search for Colour

Black and white photographic papers can be toned with chemical toners. In the college you have the  following available.

Sepia.

Copper.

Blue.

The main formula for each type is as follows: …

PDF: Toning Fibre and Resin Based Papers

Speedisepia

Good tones are obtained with  normally exposed and developed conventional paper prints. Some modern papers even those described as ‘fibre’ are liable to give variable results and ‘blotches’. It is recomended that prints are given full exposure, and development, an acid  stop, fixed in a simple non hardening fixer, and copiously washed. Work only under subdued lighting. …

PDF: Speedisepia