A picture paints a thousand words, a photograph captures a thousand hearts.

Environment has always been a concern being a New Zealander. We put high standards to maintaining a clean environment. However, as I walk through the inner works of the city, i notice cans, and plastic bags hit the streets without careless regard by people to pick it up and put it in the bin. Is it a part of people to take it for granted? I captured a few pictures at Jervois Quay. What is your interpretation to my photographs?

Photograms ... a lost art

  A photogram is a product, which is produced by capturing images with exposure of light using a set time interval. Photograms were introduced during the 1800’s. It was discovered by Fox Talbot in a town of Wiltshire, England. Fox Talbot was a pioneer of photography. He was the father of photograms. He discovered it in England during the mid 1800’s. He graduated from the University of Cambridge. After graduating, he joined the French Academy of Science. However, it was Johann Heinrich Schultz, who was a physicist and medical doctor that came up with the process of photograms in Germany.

  In creating a photogram, the object is placed on the photopaper. Next, objects are exposed to light with an interval of 3 seconds. Once exposed, the photo paper is taken to the darkroom for processing. Then, the photo paper is soaked into the developer solution tray.

  Next, the photopaper is transferred to the second tray. The second tray is referred as stop solution. The stop solution allows the image to stop developing within 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, the photo paper is transferred into the fix solution tray. Photo paper is then soaked into the fix solution for 2 minutes. Finally, it is dipped in the water to be washed.  After washing the photopaper, it is hang dried.

 The two photograms below are my experimental evidences. The first photogram shows translucent objects such as coins, lip balm and swap card. Second photogram indicates a metallic and translucent objects such as glasses and coins. Between the two, the exposure time is different. One test was about 3 seconds, while the second photogram was 6 seconds. It was 3 seconds difference of time interval. The third photogram was taken by a pinhole aperture of 382 compared to DSLR Aperture F32. Next, the shutter speed was measured as ½ frame per second depending on the area.  Finally, the final shutter speed had been concluded at 16 minutes as to capture the image. What I observe was when there is more light, the photogram will become darker and when there less light it is lighter.

Contribution of photograms in the past was quite well known and it made other practitioners been attracted towards the traditional way of capturing images.  In my opinion, photogram is still a good technology and shows good quality images. It is a very beautiful piece of art and hopefully photogram can become a part of the photography world.

 Photograms are still relevant today, because they give detailed images. There are certain aspects that a digital camera would not detect. Photograms provide good quality images. I would like to conclude by discussing three aspects. They are photography art, marketability and usability

It is dependent on the quality of the paper itself. There are two types of photo paper, the fibrous and resin coated. Resin coated is the most popular and marketable brand of photo paper in New Zealand. In NZ Ilford is a great producer of photo paper. Their photo papers produce good quality photograms. Markets in the US sell a different brand of photo paper. Besides the quality of the paper itself, factors such as the aperture and the time interval set also affect the marketability of the photograms.  It is about the complexity of how to get a picture using photograms. It takes a long time to just snap a picture. It is unless someone could follow how the person had precisely timed its interval. Photograms cannot be digitalized and therefore cannot be reproduced or modified.

The photo paper’s usability is dependent on the time limitation to the exposure of light. When the photo paper is exposed to light for a long duration, it will produce a black mark on the photo paper. Once the photo paper is used, it can’t be reused again. Photograms can be used for other things such as cyanotypes. Photograms can make good cyanotypes and it can used as picture frames for doors.

An example of my work that shows an exposure done over time on the Wellington sky scape:

 

Hello from Gods Playground!

Kia ora, fellow men.

I have set up this blog to promote the work of my talented brother who is currently studying at Wellington Institute of Technology as an artist with the Creative Technologies school. He is currently learning art and its dependencies to technology. I hope this blog will be a testament to the journey in this amazing world of creative art. I will immerse you in the beauty of his mind and promote his form of art, which has great comparison to works by David Hockney.

Note: This is setup as a temporary site to a more permanent site which will be done by end of October, 2015. Thanks to Amazon AWS.