the five stages of photography

The five stages of photography...like the five stages of grief, but more expensive. I've experienced them many times, most recently over my pinhole exposure times. Since I started printing in the color darkroom, I've realized that all my pinhole negatives are underexposed.

Not horribly. They're fine once I scan them in and adjust the contrast. But you can't adjust the contrast with color enlargers, and my prints from them look washed out and awful.

1. Denial
This can't be right. I mean, there must be something I can do to fix these negatives that I have spent hours shooting. I will ask someone who knows more than I do, and surely they will tell me what that thing is.

Person I asked: The color enlargers have no contrast filters. It's really important to get your exposure correct in camera.

Me: But I didn't. Now what?

Person I asked: Take better pictures? 

2. Anger
But! I don't have time for this! My assignment, it is due in a mere two weeks! How will I ever reshoot and have time to print as well! This is &@#$*&#!! 

3. Bargaining
 I know what I will do! I will make digital negatives! This will totally work, even though I have never done it for color before and even though I can't find anyone else who has done it for color before because as usual I am the most insane person at my school.

4. Depression
Oh, this is a bad idea. I don't have time to figure out how brownish orange to make my digital negatives to compensate for the amount of brownish orange in film negatives; I would be color correcting them for the rest of my life instead of just the rest of the semester. I AM DOOMED.

5. Acceptance
...I will have to reshoot. It will take forever. At least one of my exposures needs to be about four hours long, and I need at least eight photos. I'd better get started.

*orders more film*
*orders more photo paper*
*puts Adorama's metaphorical kids through college*

fairy graffiti

Today I went for a hike that was meant to be a walk. I wouldn't say I got lost, exactly, except for not knowing where I was at several points. At all. This always happens when I go to this place. It's because they have miles and miles and miles of trails and only three types of signs. 

One of these signs directs you to Pine Hollow, the next to Meadowview, and the third to Vista Overlook. This would be sufficient if A) you ever got to any of these places and B) the signs agreed on which was which. As it was, I hiked quite a way on Meadowview, never saw a meadow, and, when I came to a crossroads, found a sign assuring me that Pine Hollow was ahead of me, behind me, and to my left. 

By that point, the only sign I wanted to see was one that read Your Car Is This Way. The thoughts uppermost in my mind were that I should've brought water and that I would die of exposure and be eaten by squirrels. 

Eventually, I met people coming the other way. We reassured each other that yes, we had each come from somewhere, and that the trail did not go on and on until it dropped off the edge of the world, or into an immense, man-eating Pine Hollow. 

Along the way, I took some pictures. 

The spiderweb has not been fiddled in Photoshop. It is genuinely rainbow colored, I suppose because of the way the light was bouncing off its strands. There was also a fabulous green spider in the middle, but I wasn't tall enough to get a good picture of it.

how to make orotones (i hope)

A few weeks ago, two friends and I went to the Photo Antiquities Museum. If you live in, or near, or plan to visit Pittsburgh, you should absolutely go. I thought it would be sort of meh to be honest, but somehow they have packed SHEER AMAZINGNESS into a space barely bigger than my apartment. 

Three things in particular left me feeling as if I'd been smacked in the face with a fish, but in a good way. 

1. The bakery across the street, which has the best cookies I have ever had and would be good for luring non-photographers to accompany you to the museum.

2. The glass plate stereograms, which give such a 3D effect that you'd swear you could walk right into them. More so than 3D movies. More so than anything except real life. 

3. The orotones. I went from knowing absolutely zippo about orotones to wanting to make them in about five minutes. And, once I'd thought about it, it didn't seem like it would be that hard. 

From the wikipedia entry:

An orotone photograph is created by printing a positive on a glass plate precoated with a silver gelatin emulsion. Following exposure and development, the emulsion is coated with banana oil impregnated with gold colored pigment, to yield a gold-toned image.

Which is all true, but doesn't really capture the result, which is a glittering depth that is almost-but-not-really 3D and makes you feel like you're looking into something rather than merely at it. The man giving the tour compared it to the depth you get with a glittery paint on a car, which is accurate, if less poetic than I'd like.

what not to do with liquid light

Liquid Light is like Jell-o. Light-sensitive Jell-o. Jell-o that you paint on paper or pottery or china or masks or eggs or probably even skin (don't; I'm pretty sure it's not good for you) and use to make photos.

You could also put it on eggs.

Or rocks.

Or wood.

Pretty much anything really. Not your cat. Even if your cat is patient enough to let you try. (If your cat is patient enough to let you try, you should probably look into getting your cat on TV because your cat is a very special animal.)

So you get this black bottle in the mail from Amazon or Freestyle or Adorama. To get it out of the bottle, you need to heat it up, because Jell-o is not pourable.

Do: sit your bottle of Liquid Light in a hot water bath to transform it from wobbly-but-solid to gloopy-but-liquid.

DO NOT: unless you're heating your Liquid Light in a darkroom with a safelight, do not open the bottle of light-sensitive material to see how that's going.

Just saying.

(No, I didn't, actually. But it was thisclose.)