![]() ![]() ![]() I remembered that I had a cardboard box camera with plastic, credit card-sized fresnel magnifier lens, which I used for my initial experiments. The little wooden Lumenbox camera has a sufficiently fast lens to capture a sufficient exposure in about 15 minute's exposure to a brightly sunlit scene. Of course, the process is almost too insensitive to light to be of any use photographically, unless you're doing lumen prints in a pinhole camera of the sun's course across the sky over weeks or months time. That is, the halides will turn a darker tone or color, merely from the action of exposure to sun without the aid of any development chemistry. Silver halides have this property, if given sufficient exposure, of auto-development. I did some thinking about this, and then remembered a textbook on photography science that I had around the house, which revealed the answer. After some time in bright sun, a pretty conventional looking paper negative results, straight out of camera. In the short Lumenbox video you can see him doing what at first glance appears impossible: exposing paper negatives to bright sun, then loading them into the little box camera, but not before first wetting the paper in a little container of water. It took three attempts, but the image below was born.I recently saw an article on Filmwasters website about a guy selling a little wooden box camera that he calls Lumenbox, and doing Lumen prints. After a few individual test prints of hydrangeas it became apparent that it didn’t take a huge imaginative leap to liken them to lungs or even the brain. I wanted to push the boundary and explore what could be done with the introduction of layering silhouettes onto the image. Researching Lumen prints throws up some interesting images in Google, but for all the articles out there, the majority of the images are fairly similar and Lumen prints seem to be relatively unexplored. Another awesome resource for lumen prints and all things based around alternative photographic process related is Malin runs a great site and has been kind enough to feature my alternative photographic processes before. Cheap paper too from I havn’t had an opportunity to experiment with different paper stocks but I’ve seen deep reds and prussian blues all appear from different brands and weights of paper. Again, do not be fooled, this is indeed black and white photography paper. This piece is a blossom tree, something about the triptych looks much more satisfying when mounted. You can tell that it rained that week as water marks have appeared on the bottom half of the image, I think i’ll call that character. The images below are of branches from a tree in the garden, sandwiched onto the paper with a heavy piece of glass and left outside for a week. And that’s it, cameraless photography at it’s easiest. Lastly, once a sufficient amount of time has passed, take your object off of your photographic paper and place it in a fix bath. I find that the most bizarre colours appear the longer that the paper is left, a week is the minimum exposure time for me but that may be because of the weak English summers of late. Depending on where you are in the world you may have to leave it for anywhere up to a week. Then put your photographic paper in direct sunlight. It also squashes the object and anything that is in direct contact with the paper will be much sharper than an object which hovers slightly above it. This has the advantage of protecting your paper from the elements if a sudden shower occurs and will also stop the object from blowing away. Place the item on top of the photo paper and ten place your sheet of glass over the top. Next, add the item you wish to make a print of, leaves, flowers and other cuttings from the garden are a good place to start as they are readily accessible. Fixing it down is preferable as the wind may well blow it away, blu-tack works fine. In a pitch black room, or a dark room under red light (If you don’t have access to a darkroom then your best bet is completing these steps at night) lay your photographic paper down onto your flat surface/board. Flat surface (or flat board if you’re going to move it outside).Organic material (leaves, flowers etc.). ![]() Head out into the garden with some shears, cut off some leaves, branches and flower heads and get making! Lumen printing – What you will need Lumen prints are an incredibly an incredibly rewarding way to introduce yourself to the world of contacting printing, the biggest plus in their favour is that you don’t really need a darkroom to get them to work. ![]()
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