I’m looking for something more casual than a full update to my website, but more intentional & long form than social media. That’s a blog by any other name, so here’s my blog.
Something I’m working on slowly is getting a handle on the new to me Accelerated Lumen process. The idea of adding an accelerant to paper negatives that allow it to produce a development free latent image came from John Beaver in his recently published book Lo-Fi Photography: Art from Do-It-Yourself Chemistry and Physics. I won’t give out the recipe, do buy the book, it’s worth it for that alone but also everything else in its 374 pages.
So here are two self portraits, both taken on a homemade camera built from Cambo spare parts and a Delta-esque rear projection lens. Accelerated paper negatives, 5 & 6 minute exposures, respectively. Washed, dried in subdued light, scanned, inverted, and adjusted contrast. While I now have a really robust large format portrait set up, shooting paper, developing in caffenol, fixing properly, and scanning/inverting, it’s always been a dream to have the ability to make solargraph/lumen portraits, through the application of accelerant this now feels possible. I’ve sat for 90 minutes in direct, late day sun a few times, but it’s simply unfeasible to ask others to do the same, 5-10 minutes however, is totally acceptable.
Anyways thanks for humoring me, and thats exactly what these posts will be, photos and a brief bit of behind the scenes about their creation, mostly because the words are rattling around in my head and I have no good place to put them.
xoxo
john