Ned's photos

Sonoma Coast, California I placed a solargraphy can here

Sepia photogram Printed 1 December 2018

orange manzano pepper plant printed 25 November 2018

Sonoma Coast in California

Having fun making cyanotypes... printed 24 November 2018

Positive cyanotype from sepiaprint negative... printed 24 November 2018

Namias' sepiaprint of a maple leaf... Printed 22 November 2018

First time cyanotype... this is what it looks like after printing, haven't washed it yet. I wet the leaf with water before printing, got the idea from H Lisa Solon . Print is about 9x11 inches.

Was hoping to go to the mountains and go fishing over the weekend, but couldn't go... so yesterday I went to Lake Sonoma near where I live instead. It was >95°F ( 35°C ) and there was no shade on the shoreline, but I had the idea of climbing down into the shade of this bridge and it was a nice place to spend a couple hours :) pinhole image on instant film

At the Veronda-Falletti Ranch in Cotati, California. Paper negative in a coffee can pinhole camera.

I have a film camera ( Nikon 2020 ) with markings on a zoom lens that help me visualize what might be on a 7x11" large format image... today I tried to do it with my digital camera. Thinking of going here this weekend to make a calotype...

Printed 29 and 30 June, 2018 Quick digi-snaps of some test prints. The top is a plain salt print and the bottom is similar but toned with gold thiocyanate. For whatever reason, this old pinhole paper negative has become my "test" negative... I've probably printed it 200 times. It has bright highlights, a dark foreground, the sky is good for evaluating what highlights will do, and the water is good to see if the "glow" that can happen when using starch is there. It's a long story why, but lately I've decided to really make an effort to print with starch as the binder ( instead of gelatin or plain paper ). I've been working with rice starch and these represent a kind of breakthrough: even coating, enough silver without having to double coat or use too strong silver nitrate solution, and lack of fog. The margins on the right are masked during printing, and only coated 1/2 way across with silver nitrate, so you can compare the brightest white on the print with uncoated paper. On the top print, it is nearly perfect. On the bottom, there is just a hint of a "shadow" but it is very good. More importantly, there are no areas on the prints that are weak because they did not get enough silver nitrate, and there are no streaks or lines from uneven starch coating. Turns out that the kind of rice you get the starch from is very important! By luck I tried basmati rice and it works much better than other kinds of rice or arrowroot. I have a stack of prints of this negative..about 2 or 3 inches high..made in the past couple years. Most were made with various papers + applying arrowroot in different ways, and some with rice starch. Some of them have beautiful tones, but all of them have flaws and problems that make the process unusable. These are the first two that really worked! Because our cupboard only had basmati rice in it. These were made by floating the paper on dilute rice water with 2% kosher salt, drying, and then brush coating with silver nitrate, drying and exposing. Since it worked so well, yesterday I prepared a batch of larger paper to make more prints with. I've got one going right now as I type this... :)

WPPD 2018 coffee can pinhole camera, paper negative

WPPD 2018

WPPD 2018

WPPD 2018

Oaks at Ragle Ranch Park in Sonoma County, California. Printed 3 February 2018 Salted paper print of a calotype . 7x11 inch image on 9x13 Strathmore 500 drawing paper. Toned in gold borax and platinum. Sorry I can't get the color right... it's subtle and nice: midtones remind me of the color with vinegar instead of citric acid in the silver nitrate. The darkest shadows were just starting to turn a sooty black when I stopped the toning.

Salted paper print of a calotype . Printed 28 January 2018 7x11 inch image on 9x13 Strathmore 500 drawing paper, plate finish Started exposure facing East away from the sun with a paper diffuser, my daughter and I went to the beach and when we got home the sun was setting. I finished it with 5 minutes under BLB but it didn't print deeply enough to tone well. Toned in gold thiocyanate for over an hour, it did not shift the color much but it did increase contrast and brighten the water a bit. It has a kind of soft light look that reminds me of that morning. I thought I was going to need to re-print it, but I like it just the way it is.