Camera-less photographs occupy an important yet underappreciated place in the history of photography. While still considered an experimental medium, the photogram, or camera-less image is a photograph produced by the action of light on a light-sensitive surface without the aid of a camera and lens. Camera-less photographs engage the core of the photographic process —…
Category: Experimental Photography
Varanasi Streets | the ProCam App
The cameraphone merges the most important communication devices in the history of the planet—the telephone, the camera, and the internet. The camera phone or smartphone concept has dramatically reshaped expectations of photography and the look and feel of the camera. Camera phone conventions appeared in 1988, and the first wireless camera phone prototype appeared in…
At Spenceville, Reflections in an Ephemeral Pond
In early January 2022, I had a chance to experiment with photographing reflections in an ephemeral pond in the Spenceville Wildlife Refuge in the Sierra Nevada Foothills of Northern California. After heavy December and January rains, seasonal streams were flowing and ponds were full. I was treated to a still morning and clear skies, perfect…
Relics, In A Gold Country
That the past is different from the present is its foremost attraction. We know about the past through history, memory, and relics. Photography is critical in shaping our knowledge of the past, as a physical record of the past, as a stimulus to memory, and through the creation of visual artifacts of the past.[1] The…
Experimenting with Infrared Full-Spectrum Photography
Early 19th-century photography was only able to record light falling in the blue and the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This very limited spectral range is best seen in the blank white skies in landscape photography in the mid-19th century. [1] By the 1880s and following the addition of sensitizing dyes to silver gelatin…
Experimenting with Lens Blur: the Burnside 35mm Lens
Humans see binocularly, whereas a camera lens records light with only one light source—monocularly establishing a single point of focus. The photographer chooses a single point of focus, giving emphasis and meaning to the image. By adjusting the focus in the image, a photographer can establish a hierarchy of focus and attention over the image….
Negative Portraits In Silver
In a box of photographs collected at junk stores, I discovered a long-forgotten package of silver gelatin dry plate portraits. Likely created in the early 20th century, the photographer, the location, creation dates, and the subjects of the photographs are unknown. These many unknown only add to the haunting visual qualities of these silver gelatin…
Found Photograph, Varanasi, a Story.
Experimental photography asks questions: What is it? What process was used? But most importantly, what is a photograph? Some of the first responses to photography spoke of the magical powers of the photograph to capture traces of the world with unbelievable accuracy. Something of the divine seemed to appear in the first photographs, and early…
Northern Lights, High ISO
Northern Lights are always occurring, however, they are only viewable when lower levels of light pollution occur, and typically on clear nights in September through April in the Northern Hemisphere. The aurora borealis and aurora australis, the northern or southern lights, are caused by particles escaping from the sun, a phenomenon known as solar wind into space. The…
Matching Color From a Vintage Stereo Card
The stereo camera coupled with the stereoscope is one of the 19th century’s most unique inventions. The stereography extended the visual reach of photography and unlike any other photographic process or invention, through the vivid illusion of three-dimensionality, “captured the visual essence of nature.”[1] In the presentation above, I demonstrate how to use Photoshop’s Match…
Mission San Xavier del Bac and Color IR Film
Mission San Xavier del Bac is located about 10 miles south of Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1692 by Eusebio Francisco Kino, the Mission was the last settlement in a chain of Jesuit missions in the Sonoran Desert. Setting just a few miles west of Interstate 19, the church is an active parish and pilgrimage site…
The Little Brown Dog, Chewed Film, Man Ray.
So I have a little brown dog (Elliot). Eliot is a great dog, my constant companion, a great photo-buddy who jumps to attention whenever I pick up a camera or tripod. However, sometimes he reverts to his puppy personality and chews up clothing, shoes, blankets. Several years ago, he grabbed a roll of 120mm film…
Death Valley, Painted Landscapes
The mediums of painting and photography have intersected at many times. With the invention of photography, painters began to work from photographs. Eugene Delacroix created nude studies based on daguerreotype photographs by Eugene Durieu. Praising the effects of photography, Delacroix wrote in 1850 “A daguerreotype is the mirror of the object, certain details almost always…
Shooting Out-of-Date Film
Shooting and processing out-of-date film engage the core of experimental photography. Part chance, part experience, part research, processing old film engages new approaches to photography through trial and error. After the adoption of the 35mm film width in 1909 as the international standard gauge for movie picture systems, 35mm still cameras were introduced to exploit…
Portraits, Jesuit-Guaraní Sculptures
After first establishing a mission at San Ignacio Guazú, Paraguay, in 1609, the Society of the Jesuits would go on to build 30 mission settlements called reductions among the Guaraní people in the fertile river valleys of the Parana and Uruguay Rivers, a region today spanning the countries of Southern Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. [1]…
Statuary Portraits, Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Designed by a French engineer Próspero Catelin, the Recoleta Cemetery is Buenos Aire’s most compelling tourist attraction. Mirroring the sprawling metropolis outside the large stonewalls of the Recoleta, over 6,400 statues, stone coffins, and burial vaults are crammed into the labyrinthine 14-acre cemetery. Opened in 1822, tall concrete, marble, and black granite mausoleums in every…
Luminances, the Ceramic Portraits of the Recoleta Cemetery, Asunción, Paraguay
Angel, Recoleta Cemetery, Asunción, Paraguay Photographs possess the remarkable ability to close distances of time and space and bring forward the person, place, or thing which stood before the lens. Referred to as “photography’s transparency,” this quality remains photography’s most distinctive feature.[1] In 1843, shortly after the appearance of the first photographs, Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning…
Frank Hurley, Antarctica, the Kodak Vest Pocket
The Australian photographer, Frank Hurley is a unique case, and inexplicably his achievements remain largely unreported in many current histories of photography. Although primarily known as a still photographer, Hurley would pioneer techniques first seen with his Antarctic expedition photography to create a wholly new entertainment form known as the “travelogue” or the “travel-adventure documentary” film.[1] Although his best work was completed one hundred…
Occasions
First begun in 1984, Occasions juxtaposes gift wrapping papers, party streamers, balloons, beach balls, and other brightly colored objects with the ruins of Native American pueblos, mission ruins, ghost towns, military forts, gas stations, and other abandoned structures located throughout the western landscape. The title for Occasions derives from the advertised suggestions for wrapping papers and party…
Transfers
In the arts and printing, transfer means to convey an image from one surface to another. By merging analog photographic processes with digital tools, the Transfers Series experiments with instant film image transfer processes as a departure point to comment upon the concept of change through time. The multiple processes of the Transfers Series pose questions about the place, event,…
Stones and Trees
At elevations from 200 to 1200 feet, the Spenceville Wildlife Area in Yuba and Nevada County, California features rolling hills of blue oak and gray pine characteristic of the Sierra Nevada Foothills. Once part of Camp Beale, a massive World War II-era training base, the area features numerous creeks, waterfalls, and from the western extension,…
The Proposals Series
Proposals. The term visual poetry refers to experiments undertaken with the semantic character of words, and as an experimental genre, visual poetry blends multiple mediums. Visual poetry seeks to be seen as a painting or photograph, and read for the lyric associations of poetry. Often reducing language to typographical forms, visual poetry experiments with situating…
The Lego Camera: the Theory of Constraints For Creativity
The Lego Digital Camera Creativity is defined as the creation of something new, useful, or generative.[1] The theory of constraints for creativity asserts the contradictory notion that limits engender creative problem-solving. Creativity involves constraints, which can hinder as well as stimulate problem-solving. For example, in an overly structured problem, little room is left for creativity,…
Morning Glories: Lumen Print Making
Morning Glories, a series of lumen prints Lumen printmaking is one of the most fascinating camera-less photographic processes. Lumen prints begin with silver gelatin photographic papers, the traditional photographic paper used in the making of black and white prints since the late 1870s. Silver gelatin photographic papers are conventionally used in a darkroom under safelight…
Borrowed Sources
Thoughts on Walter Benjamin, Appropriation, Technology and Landscape Walter Benjamin Published in 1936, Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is the first commentary on the ways in which technology changes the conditions of art. Benjamin’s tightly written essay continues to generate debate and has spawned thousands of critical interpretations. In…