| 00:00 | (music playing)
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| 00:07 | Here we are, in my office where
I do all my digital photography.
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| 00:12 | I'm going to work with an image that I
shot in New Mexico, outside of Gallup.
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| 00:17 | I have scanned my black-and-white
negative on a flatbed scanner, brought it up
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| 00:22 | into Photoshop, and now we are going to
make adjustments the easy way here in
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| 00:28 | the digital world, taking care of dust
spots. And then I am going to flip the
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| 00:34 | whole thing into a negative in order to end up
with a positive print on my watercolor paper.
|
| 00:39 | I am going to change the contrast,
because I know what sort of negative I need
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| 00:46 | in order to make gum prints.
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| 00:48 | And instead of printing on a piece of
paper, like most photographers who are
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| 00:52 | finished with their digital print,
we are going to print to a sheet of clear
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| 00:57 | acetate to make a big negative.
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| 01:01 | (music playing)
|
| 01:09 | Welcome to my dungeon--I mean my
darkroom--where we are going to try and put all
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| 01:12 | of these processes together.
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| 01:14 | We are going to use digital negatives,
and we are going to layer different 19th-
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| 01:18 | century processes together.
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| 01:19 | So let's start with making a cyanotype
right now, and I am going to take two potions.
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| 01:25 | One of them is a very poisonous and
evil and the other, not so much.
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| 01:30 | But I am going to use equal amounts of
A, or ferric ammonium citrate, which is
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| 01:41 | very tame, and then I'm going to
put an equal amount of B, or potassium
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| 01:48 | ferricyanide, which, as the
name implies, is pretty evil.
|
| 01:52 | Potassium ferricyanide, if I were to
toss this into anything acid, even stock
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| 01:58 | acid, some of the chemicals that you
find in a darkroom, it releases cyanide
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| 02:02 | gas similar to the gas chamber,
so I won't do that right now.
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| 02:06 | So I am going to mix equal portions,
and then I am going to dip just a simple
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| 02:14 | hardware store 49-cent black foam brush
into this cyanotype potion. And I've got
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| 02:23 | a sheet of Rives BFK watercolor paper
here, and I'm just going to come to these
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| 02:31 | yellow lights, coat the emulsion onto the paper.
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| 02:37 | And as you can see, this particular
photographic process is not very sensitive to
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| 02:45 | light, and the key thing is to
keep blue light away from this.
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| 02:52 | This emulsion--cyanotypes and gum
prints and platinum most non-silver processes--
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| 02:57 | are really sensitive to
ultraviolet light, or blue light.
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| 03:00 | So as long as we have got yellow light--
kind of the opposite of blue--this
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| 03:04 | emulsion isn't seeing a thing in here.
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| 03:06 | Now that our cyanotype paper is dry
and ready to be baked out in the sun,
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| 03:12 | exposed for maybe ten minutes or so, I
am going to get my contact printing frame
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| 03:17 | and we'll put the negative in
contact with this light-sensitized piece of
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| 03:22 | watercolor paper that's now dry.
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| 03:24 | And the way to do that is to bring up
what is called a contact printing frame.
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| 03:31 | I just made this myself with a
sheet of Masonite and a big sheet of
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| 03:37 | coffee-table-thickness glass,
quarter-inch glass, with the edges sanded or
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| 03:42 | seamed so you don't cut yourself.
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| 03:43 | So now we've got our coated sheet of
watercolor paper with the cyanotype potion.
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| 03:53 | We have got our negative.
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| 04:00 | And we'll press these together in contact.
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| 04:11 | Even though the glass is heavy, I want
to really make sure it's under pressure.
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| 04:18 | And then we'll take this out in full
sunlight for about ten minutes and it will
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| 04:22 | turn blue as it exposes to sunlight.
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| 04:24 | We exposed it in the sun for ten
minutes, brought it in, rinsed it.
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| 04:33 | It's now dry and ready to have a
gum bichromate run brushed onto it.
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| 04:39 | And what I like to do is
cover the whole thing with brown.
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| 04:43 | You know, after all, I never
wanted my desert scene to look blue.
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| 04:46 | I would love it to look
kind of a sandy sepia brown.
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| 04:49 | So what we'll do now is switch
to the gum bichromate process.
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| 04:54 | I have got my favorite paint here.
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| 04:58 | Some people use watercolor.
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| 04:59 | I actually like to use gouache.
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| 05:01 | This is Winsor & Newton gouache.
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| 05:03 | The difference is gouache is opaque;
watercolor is kind of transparent and you
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| 05:07 | get kind of a thinner result,
but this is very bold and rich.
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| 05:12 | And I have got my old-fashioned scales here.
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| 05:15 | And I am going to weigh out about a
gram of it. And from years of experience, I
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| 05:23 | just know what a gram feels like.
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| 05:25 | Then I am going to put that pigment
into some gum arabic, 10 ml of gum arabic.
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| 05:32 |
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| 05:39 | And gum arabic is actually what
makes watercolor and gouache wet.
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| 05:44 | Gum arabic is actually the
medium of watercolor and gouache.
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| 05:48 | So what I'm really saying is this
pigment is just going into its own
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| 05:52 | friendly environment.
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| 05:56 | So the pigment is getting mixed up
into gum arabic, 1 gram of pigment in
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| 06:05 | 10 milliliters of gum.
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| 06:08 | And gum is very, very tame, very non-toxic.
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| 06:11 | You'll notice gum arabic in the
ingredients in so many foods, like chewing
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| 06:17 | gum and other things.
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| 06:19 | The other half of gum printing--the
part that makes it light-sensitive--is
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| 06:24 | ammonium dichromate.
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| 06:26 | This is definitely evil stuff.
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| 06:29 | I should be wearing gloves, and I want
you wear gloves whenever you do this.
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| 06:35 | All this gets mixed together, and now
we'll coat this light-sensitive potion
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| 06:46 | onto the cyanotype, and we are going to begin
to make this look much more like a desert now.
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| 06:53 | This is an old hake brush,
H-A-K-E, which painters use.
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| 07:00 | It's actually rabbit fur or goat
fur, so somewhere out there is a very
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| 07:05 | cold bunny right now.
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| 07:06 | But it's very soft fur.
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| 07:14 | You can see, I purposely don't
completely cover up the underlying cyanotype run.
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| 07:21 | I like this imperfection and signs of
human hand, the brush marks, and I like to
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| 07:26 | let people see what lies underneath each layer.
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| 07:30 | So we started with a blue print, a cyanotype.
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| 07:33 | You can still see a little bit of it there.
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| 07:35 | Then we recoated it with
the brown gum bichromate.
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| 07:38 | We'll take the same negative now and
put it back on top, in register, right
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| 07:46 | exactly where it was before.
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| 07:48 | I have put some letters in Photoshop.
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| 07:52 | You can put bull's-eyes or printer's
bull's-eyes or you can even put big
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| 07:56 | letters out in your margins in your
canvas area, just to give you something to
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| 08:02 | act as a registration mark.
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| 08:06 | So now we have just come in from bright
sunlight. I have exposed the brown sepia
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| 08:12 | gum exposure for about six
minutes in full sunlight.
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| 08:16 | And now it's lying on top of the
cyanotype run, but we won't really see much of
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| 08:23 | an image for a few minutes.
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| 08:26 | I am going to lay the print face down in
a tray of water--no more running water;
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| 08:33 | we would actually rinse the gum exposure off.
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| 08:36 | The gum is actually going to sit on the
surface of the cyanotype just like this thin slime.
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| 08:41 | But that's when the fun starts, because
I'm about to go in with a paintbrush and
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| 08:46 | get my white tepees back.
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| 08:47 | But we will let it soak face down for a
few minutes just in room-temperature water.
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| 08:54 | You've got to be very patient to work with
these 19th-century processes. Gum prints
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| 08:59 | often take an hour or more of soaking
face down before they start developing.
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| 09:05 | Gravity pulls the pigment down off
of the paper and you begin to get your
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| 09:09 | highlights back, your whites.
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| 09:11 | But it's a good sign when you begin to
see pigment running off and beginning
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| 09:15 | to dirty the water.
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| 09:17 | This tray should start taking on this
brown sepia color when the gum emulsion
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| 09:23 | starts coming off, in the
areas where we want it to.
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| 09:26 | We certainly want the gum to stick to
the dark areas, in the midtones, but I'm
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| 09:31 | hoping that gum will come off in the
white areas, if you give it the right
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| 09:35 | exposure out in sunlight.
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| 09:37 | So what I'm going to do is help my
highlights come back. The gum is actually
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| 09:42 | just this thin slime on the surface.
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| 09:45 | It's very delicate.
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| 09:46 | You wouldn't want to run the print over
the edge of a tray at this point, after
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| 09:51 | it's been developing for ten or fifteen minutes.
|
| 09:54 | So what I am going to do
is help get my tepees back.
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| 10:00 |
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| 10:02 | It's very handmade;
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| 10:04 | it has signs of a human touch, my imperfections.
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| 10:09 | Of course if I make a drastic mistake,
I can always correct it by going back in
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| 10:16 | with watercolors. I can retouch this
when all is set and done, because after all,
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| 10:23 | it is a sheet of watercolor paper
waiting to have anything done to it that you
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| 10:28 | can do to a watercolor paper.
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| 10:31 | So now we have got brown over blue.
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| 10:34 | And now what I want to do is make the
sagebrush in the foliage green, so I am
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| 10:39 | going to mix up another run of gum
bichromate emulsion, this time in green.
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| 10:47 | This is olive green, which I really like.
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| 10:49 | It's very kind of khaki green;
it's not a bright garish green.
|
| 10:56 | Let's take a new bowl of gum arabic, 10 ml.
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| 11:05 | And we'll give this green gum a place to land.
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| 11:12 | Now it's time to add the other
half of gum printing which makes
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| 11:21 | it light-sensitive.
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| 11:23 | Neither of these potions are
light-sensitive on their own.
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| 11:28 | The gum arabic is not light-
sensitive, the potassium bichromate is not
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| 11:33 | light-sensitive, but when you mix them
together they become light-sensitive.
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| 11:38 | So now I'm going to use
this beautiful bamboo brush.
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| 11:45 | I actually have the luxury of sensitizing
the print just where I want green to be.
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| 11:56 | And we'll end with a black run, which actually
kind of homogenizes the green and the brown.
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| 12:02 | And that will give us a very kind of
dark and ominous and nocturnal-looking
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| 12:07 | scene, which is what I am looking for.
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| 12:09 | Because when I happened upon these
tepees, the sun had set, and it was really
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| 12:14 | twilight, very surreal and quiet as I
took my camera out and crunched in the
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| 12:20 | desert gravel to set up this scene.
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| 12:21 | And so now we will let this dry.
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| 12:25 | We will take the same negative.
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| 12:27 | I am going to use my registration
marks to line up the same negative.
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| 12:32 | We'll take it out in the sun and expose a
green layer to give us our grassy sagebrush.
|
| 12:39 | When I took this picture I was
interested in making traditional black-and-white
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| 12:44 | silver prints in a darkroom, and you
can certainly make a dark silvery print.
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| 12:49 | But photo paper has such a machine-made
surface. You know, it's often glossy, or
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| 12:55 | it just seems very store-bought.
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| 12:57 | But what I love about this process is
that it will be much more organic, much
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| 13:01 | more human-made than anything that
comes out of a box of store-bought paper.
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| 13:08 |
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