In my last post, I mentioned some techniques I was considering undertaking that are related to alternative printing methods. After writing that list, I decided that I wanted to specifically explore three different avenues:

• Printing on fine art papers (and possibly fabrics) using InkAid coatings

• Image transfers onto various media

• Photo Encaustics

I thought some people might be interested in updates, particularly if they were considering doing such work themselves. This is the first of those updates.

The first thing I wanted to try was printing on fine art papers that were not meant for inkjet printers. There are a lot of very luxurious types of art papers available, and living right near an Artists and Craftsmen store (it’s a great place to browse), I have easy access to seeing and feeling (paper is a tactile experience as well as a visual one) many of these papers. I bought one that I found particularly nice to try out (an Arches warm-toned molded cover paper).

But I ran into BIG trouble, enough that I have abandoned the idea of using this technique with my current printer. Whatever paper you choose needs to be coated with an ink-receptive coating. When you coat a porous surface like paper, the coating is absorbed, and as it dries the paper curls. That is well recognized on the InkAid site and they mention that you can flatten the paper considerably by putting a weight on it or pulling it over a tabletop edge to get out the curl. And the truth is that the tabletop method works pretty well at flattening the paper. But it isn’t perfect. And that’s the rub.

Epson printers (at least the large format ones that I am familiar with) feed paper from the back straight down and the sheet is then curled under the platen and held flat by the platen and suction before it gets to the printhead. I might be wrong about that since it has been some time since I had my Epson 7600 and 7900’s. But I have a wide format Canon printer now, and that printer does things differently.

Canon wide format printers load from the front, with the paper being parallel to the printhead. The paper is then drawn into the printer and held flat by suction. A portion of the printhead that is not squirting ink runs back and forth over a portion of the paper that is not yet held down by the platen or with suction because it has not yet reached the platen. Because the paper is not nearly perfectly flat, even after straightening, the printhead hits the paper that is feeding, wreaks havoc, and stops while spitting out an error message. Severe head strikes are not something you want to see your printed doing, and it did so with all three paper samples and coatings that I used, despite setting the platen gap to the widest setting (which makes sense because I believe the strikes were occurring proximal to the platen).

The long and the short of it is that I won’t be trying this any further with papers, though I might try printing on fabric (which I am guessing won’t curl and that could be taped onto a carrier sheet so that it is flat). But for right now I am giving up on this method,

So what’s next in line? I am going to be trying image transfers using a different InkAid product. In image transfer, work is printed in a more or less standard fashion and the substrate the image is to be ultimately transferred to (one can try lots of entering substrates….wood, paper, metal, canvas, tile, etc) is coated with a material that absorbs or transfers the ink from the print to the new substrate (for a broader view see The Mixed Media Photography Book’ by Nitsa Malik). The InkAid product utilizes prints that are made on a clear sheet that has a special coating on it. This sheet is flat and comes directly from the manufacturer pre-coated so I won’t have the head strike issue. I am assuming that the printer will ‘see’ the clear sheet but that remains to be seen in my next adventure in alternative print making!

The digital era has brought us to the point where images can be reproduced exactly and without any loss of quality with the push of the ‘Print’ button in Photoshop. And there is nothing wrong with that! A great photograph is a work of art in and of itself. But lately, I have been giving a lot of thought and doing a good deal of research about how to make photographic prints into something that has the potential to be more expressive and unique, such that there can’t be an exact reproduction made.

These are some of the techniques I have been reading about

Printing on ‘non-standard’ media – This is just the start of doing things differently. Of course, there is the ever-popular printing on plexiglass, metal, glass, and canvas. But while prints on these media certainly have a different appearance than a print on paper, they, too, can be reproduced entirely with the press of a button. The first step to producing something more unique would be to use an inkjet receptive coating on various fine art papers that are not available for inkjet printers. These coatings need to be applied to the paper, and it is in the application method that a level of uniqueness can be produced. The brush strokes involved in the application can be made in a very organic fashion and are, or can be, made visible in the final piece. Hence, you can end up with a final print on beautiful paper that is not ordinarily used for making photographic prints and which can impart a painterly feeling. In addition, the brush strokes can form a truly three-dimensional textured pattern over the print. The best resource and materials I have found for this type of work are from a company called InkAid.

Image Transfer – There are various methods of transferring images from inkjet prints, Xerox copies of prints, and laser-printed photos to other media. These techniques are similar to analog ‘Polaroid transfers.’ They all require the painting of a layer of liquid or gel that can accept the image onto whatever the carrier media is to be. The media accepting the image can be as ‘standard’ as the fine art papers I described above to wood, metal, fabrics, tile, or just about any object you can think of. What makes such artwork unique is not only the brushstrokes that can be seen in the final image (from painting the liquid or gel onto the media), but also the uniqueness of the media itself and the fact that it’s surface texture becomes incorporated into the final artwork. InkAid also makes transfer gels. I suggest the ‘Mixed Media Photography Book’ by Nitsa Malik (link at end of post) for a higher-level introduction to this topic.

Hand Painting – A unique look can be given to photographs, particularly black and white photos, by adding color to them by hand. This can be achieved with many different types of paint (oil, acrylic, watercolor) as well as with markers or pens.

Montage and Collage – Both collage and photomontage can be accomplished digitally by using Photoshop to combine scanned or photographed objects. However, you can also physically integrate photographs with other media or artifacts to make a unique piece of artwork.

Photo Encaustics – Encaustic painting involves using pigments and wax to create artwork. But there are also ways to combine the art of encaustics with that of photography in order to create truly one-of-a-kind pieces. For example, photographs can be mounted onto wood and then coated with encaustic wax. While doing so, one can incorporate various textures and even pigments into specific areas of the wax to enhance the artwork. This can even be combined with collage by incorporating various media or objects into the wax layers. Finally, encaustics can also be combined with image transfer techniques.

Cyanotype – Cyanotype is an old analog method of producing images without a camera. An object (often one with fine detail) is placed on media coated with a light-sensitive solution that turns blue when exposed to a sufficient amount of light from the sun. The media under the object is protected from exposure, resulting in an outline of the subject. The results can be quite interesting in appearance. Cyanotypes were originally made using light-sensitive coatings that could be quite toxic, but modern coatings are much safer to use.

If you are interested in reading about these techniques, here are some suggestions:

The Mixed Media Photography Book’ by Nitsa Malik (associate link)

Encaustics Course I have purchased this (not an associate)

Cyanotype Course I have purchased this (not an associate)

Once I start experimenting, I will post some examples.

For some time, I have enjoyed taking photographs of very small sections of urban wall murals that I feel could stand on their own as abstract images. These are typically exceedingly small segments of the much larger mural.

I recently made these two images and decided to try something a bit different. They were of black paint on cinder block that was painted white. But rather than make that apparent, I thought I would ‘blow out’ the background so as to make the abstract even more abstract and appear simply as black lines on a white background without any indication of where they came from.

These are the results. I find them to be interesting and completely removed in appearance from what they actually were. I would like to try more of these, but it would have to be of murals on a white or black background which aren’t all the typical

If there is one thing that always captures my interest, it is geometric and/or symmetrical objects and shapes. I can’t help but photograph them. They will never be ‘award winners,’ but I love making them. These are inlaid stones on a walkway in a small urban park.

I accidentally neglected to include the link to my video tutorial about adding a dreamy or ethereal look to images for email subscribers. I forgot that the email service doesn’t include videos in the email itself (on the actual blog page you simply click on the video window). At any rate, for those who are interested in the tutorial and receive the posts by email this is the link to the video tutorial: https://youtu.be/PMHUOLqOHvY

My apologies for the double email today.

A few weeks ago, I posted an image which I had processed in a way that imparted an ethereal glow to it. At the time, I had asked if anyone was interested in learning how this effect was achieved. Several people replied, both on and off the blog, that they would like to learn the method. And so, this is the promised tutorial. I hope you find it useful.

This post starts with a little story. Back when I was a kid in the 1960s, I used to watch a science fiction TV show called Fireball XL-5. The characters were puppets. I distinctly remember an episode where a spaceship was sent to a planet or a moon (the details escape me) and the astronauts came back with photographs of the new world that were taken by cameras on their spaceship. But when they returned the commander was not very happy. He told them they forgot to turn on the device (or perhaps it malfunctioned, I can’t recall, this was a LONG time ago!) that would have given them a standard image of scale . Because of this they they had no idea about the size of the objects in the photo.

The astronauts weren’t going to take the drubbing so easily and they pointed out how beautiful the photos were and how it clearly showed things about the planet surface. But the commander still told them the images were completely useless as they didn’t know if they were looking at a city or patterns in a small patch of dirt without knowing the magnification.

When I was going through some of my images, this one reminded me of that story! It almost looks as if it could be an aerial photo of a river or an interconnected pipeline. But, in fact, it is a close up of a leaf. It brought me back to that one episode!

For those that are interested, I did find the opening theme for the show by searching YouTube. It really brought back memories. Remember watching black and white on TV?

Incidentally, there was a group of these type of puppet character shows at the time, including Thunderbirds, Supercar, and Stingray. I was a fan of them all! Did anybody else out there watch them?

Lately, I have been enjoying giving an ‘ethereal look’ to photographs. This image, which was in my Lightroom catalog since 2016, seemed to call for the treatment. The photo was taken on a workshop at Callaway Gardens in Georgia.

Do let me know if you are interested in how this look is achieved and I will consider making a short tutorial on how to do it. It really is quite easy.

A recent post by my photographer friend Mark Graf reminded me that several years back (2007 actually….where did 15 years go??) we had a friendly ‘Trillium Challenge’ that, in actuality, wasn’t a challenge at all. It was simply a way to celebrate the arrival of Spring, which for me always meant the emergence of trillium wildflowers. It has been quite a few years since we posted trillium images, but I was able to go out to my favorite trillium location last week, which is Hell’s Hollow in McConnell’s Mill State Park. Hell’s Hollow, despite its name, is a beautiful location and a great place to watch the successive blooms of early to late spring wildflowers. The trillium were in bloom and, along with Mark, it seemed a good time to reinstate our tradition!

While most of the trillium in Hell’s Hollow are the ‘more common’ white Trillium grandiflorum, there is one special patch of the less common Trillium erectum var. album that I know of. While I am sure that these grow in other Pennsylvania locations, this one spot is the only area I have ever seen them in. As opposed to being white, they are a very pale yellow and also have a red center with pale stamens. It was a bit windy on the day I was there, but by cranking up the ISO and then using noise reduction software I was able to get a nice macro photo of this variety.

Here is an older photo of Trillium grandiflorum, the more common variety, for comparison.

It’s hard to believe that another trillium season has come and gone. But I hope that perhaps this will revive the showing of both our yearly Trillium photos.

I went out to photograph a few days ago and found myself experimenting with in-camera multiple exposures of leaves. Truth be told, the final image in-camera had an annoying area of bright overlap that I was finding difficult to tone down. My camera allows you to save the individual images that make up the in-camera multiple exposure. In this case, I took the these images and combined them in Photoshop and simply masked out that one area of overlap and then went about my processing.

I wasn’t really sure what was going to come out the other end, but this is what happened. I guess I’m going through a dark phase :)

A few days ago, I went to a local park with the idea of photographing some of the wildflowers that were coming into bloom. I did this, but when I got home and started looking at the photos it was actually two abstracts that I had made in the park that caught my eye. It became quite cold for the next two days, with temperatures at night below freezing (the weather this year has been a bit erratic, to say the least). So I do hope that when I next go out the wildflowers will still be there, and not have died in the frost.

The first of the two abstract images that I processed is an ICM (intentional camera movement) photo with the direction of movement obviously vertical in order to create an impressionistic image of a stand of trees. In some ways images like this have become a bit cliche, but they are still fun to make!

The next image, which I titled ‘Redbud Explosion’, is a zoom abstract which I made to convey the feeling of being surrounded by the redbud trees in the park.

Doing things a bit out of the ordinary is most definitely an enjoyable exercise.

When composing and constructing photographs, it can be useful to lead the viewer’s eye through the image using light, contrast, and color. The eye first goes to the brightest, the sharpest, and the most saturated areas in an image. Of course, color saturation is not really an issue in black and white imagery.

In this photograph, taken in the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, I was interested in the interplay between light and shadow. I tried using the light during processing (enhancing what was already there) to allow the viewer’s eye to travel up the stairs, around the corner, and then leave them to wonder where the next staircase that is in shadow leads.

I was recently introduced to Photoshop’s Path Blur, which resides in the ‘Blur Gallery’. For my first try at using it, I wanted to see if I could emulate a long exposure, and I think it did quite a nice job,

The original image, or, rather, the way it came out of Lightroom and before I used the Path Blur (as well as my other Photoshop processing) is shown below.

Rather than reinvent the wheel by putting together a Path Blur tutorial, I will simply say that if you are interested in learning how this is done you need only Google ‘how to use path blur in Photoshop’ and there are many tutorials to be had. It really is quite an easy tool to use.

The most difficult part was actually figuring out the best way to mask out the sea stacks in order to keep them sharp (and not ‘Path Blurred’). In this case, I made separate selections for the sky and foreground ocean and put each selection on its own layer. I then used the Path Blur on those layers, while using a selection of the sea stacks as a mask.

I have continued to intermittently make black and white conversions of some of the older photos that I had previously processed in color. Of course, as inspired by the course I was recently taking, I have tried to put mood into them! This one was taken on a foggy evening at Bandon Beach and back in 2020 I had originally posted it in color.

One of the results of taking the course I have mentioned in the last few posts is having a new mindset regarding black and white conversions, even if that conversion is more along the lines of a ‘straight’ image without glows or blurs. I am no longer as concerned about keeping to ‘the rules’, particularly the rule about there being a full range of tones in a photo if a limited range is better at conveying the feeling and meaning of the image.

In this particular case, I wanted to convey the seemingly infinite source of the waves, and it seemed like darker tones would do that best. The image is one that I have previously posted in color, but which I recently converted to black and white.

“The photo that you took with your camera is the imagination you want to create with reality.”
Scott Lorenzo

This quote seems particularly fitting given the type of work I have been experimenting with lately. But, these days, I believe the imagination is not necessarily with the photo you took with the camera as much as it is with the post-processing. But then again, without the base image to work on there would be no post-processing. I do have to admit that I usually don’t have the end image in mind until I start with the processing and see what path it leads down.

One of the goals of the course I have been taking is to get you out of your comfort zone. So that’s where I went. This photo had been sitting in my archives since 2015, until I just figured out what to do with it.

I wanted to transmit the feeling of what is real, who is real?

I am definitely inspired by the photography course that I have been taking and have mentioned in prior posts. In the back of my mind, for some time now, I have wanted to branch out and do some other type of photography in addition to nature and landscape. I have been taken with the idea that an image can transmit a bit of mystery and the unknown, without the need for concern about including a whole tonal range, having too much black, or everything not being sharp. I rather like the idea of breaking the rules and using the broken rules as a way to focus the viewer on what I see as important in the photo, or as a way of starting them out on a story. I will simply have to see what becomes of this and enjoy the journey.

This particular image is an old one, but had been in color. I converted it to black and white for the course, purposefully without a full range of tones. When processing it, I kept thinking about the scene in the movie Poltergeist where, the lady is yelling at the ‘lost child’ to just ‘follow the light’.

I have been continuing my exploration of moving ‘out of my comfort zone’ by using darkness and blur. This is a rework of an image that I had processed some time ago. This time I wanted to give it more of an evil ‘Tower of Mordor’ type look. I did so by darkening the image, adding blur, adding the birds, and using a bluish gradient map adjustment layer to give it a slightly cool blue tone. I find it quite interesting to experiment with what type of feelings these processing changes can inject into an image. How does the image make you feel?

I often process my images using high contrast, as the contrast tends to make the image ‘pop’. But since taking the course I had previously mentioned, I am trying to experiment with looks that are more out of my comfort zone, namely, darkness, blur, and low contrast. The key is to not just use them wantonly, but to make them either fit the image or fit what you are trying to say with the photograph.

In this instance, I went out to photograph during the snowstorm we had this week while it was still snowing (which is something else I tend not to do - if I go out to photograph during the winter it is usually when the snow has already finished falling). It was definitely a low contrast situation, and looking through the falling snow I realized that I wanted to transmit that ‘white out’ feeling. Processing the photo with low contrast transmitted the feel I was looking for.