Angel Island Field Trip

Here are some images I took with my 35 film camera on a field trip with my Historic Processes class.  I had never been to Angel Island before so it was really cool!  It was fun to just take photos without an assignment in mind.  Enjoy! 

Here are some new images toward my main body of work (in progress) on self perception versus reality.   I'm taking a little break from this work and going to pick it up again in about a month. After several months of shooting every week, I feel I need time to reflect.  I hope to refocus and gain more perspective on this series in order to bring fresh and new ideas to the imagery.  I find that I am creating new characters as well as touching on the different influences on body image.  I have found that I love using available light and really enjoy the quality that comes with it.  As always, I would love some feedback as it will help me on my future work with this project.  

Experimenting with Tin Types

For these I decided to experiment with color.  I used acrylic paint and mixed it in with the emulsion when I was coating the plates.  I also dripped water onto the plates to make the emulsion thinner and to create swirling/ dripping lines.  I really like the way these turned out and am going to make some more this weekend!  Now that I know which process turned out the best, I can make more and have more success.  

Success

Here are some final tin types.  I added acrylic paint for added detail.  I'm going to try to mix paint with emulsion when I coat the plates next time to see if I can get the color to be more seamless with the exposure..... we'll see what happens!

More tin types

Been playing around more with tin types.  These aren't great, but I'm getting there......

New Shot

Here is my latest shot for my body series.  I wish I knew why blogspot sometimes changes the color and tone of my images.  (If anyone has any tips on how to keep my uploaded images exactly how my originals are that would be great.  THANKS LARRY FOR YOUR HELP! )  I have to give a giant thank you to Adrienne Pao who helped me with this photo.  Yes, that is her fireplace and sheepskin rug.  Here's to 70's mafia wife princesses everywhere!! 

Fun with Polaroid

Here are some polaroid lifts and transfers I've been working on the last week.  There are some old images and some new ones.  You might recognize some of the imagery from the gum 

prints I posted a few weeks ago.  You can tell the lifts from the transfers by the wrinkled

 edges on the lifts.  There are some images that are shown in both transfer and lift form.  You can really see the different quality in the two processes.  After trying both of these processes, I really enjoyed working with the emulsion lifts the most.  

Tin Type

This is the beginning of a series using the tin type process.  I am using the same images as the gum prints I made a few weeks ago.  I'm adding acrylic paint after the exposure is dried to add color, texture and pattern.  This particular tin type turned a sort of green color, which I actually really love- I just hope I can reproduce it! 

busy busy busy

I have been doing a lot of shooting lately- especially in the last week- for my perceived reality project.  I decided to try some interiors and I shifted toward using more lenses.  I played around with depth of field too. I think the effect is very successful and am very excited about continuing to work on this series.  I'm becoming more and more interested in altering my appearance so this series becomes universal and accessible while still being deeply personal.  

Finished Gum Prints

Got some really good feedback today from the critique in my Historic processes.  Connie suggested I paint these a shade of white to make the boxes more contemporary.  I think I'm going to try printing on tracing paper or vellum too, so the butterflies are more fragile.  I should probably stick the labeled pins directly into the "specimens" as well.  All in all though, I feel really good about how this process went.  

Perceived Reality

Here is another image to add to my series on body image.  This one is very fantastical and I like where it is heading.  I'm bringing in more elements of distortion and morphing my body in ways that are very obvious.  My goal is to expose the disconnect between my physical attributes in reality with my perception of those attributes.  Again, many thanks to Amanda Boe for being such a great help while I was shooting!  

Gum Bichromate Final

Here's a sneak peak at a couple images I've been working on for my gum printing critique.  

More Van Dyke

Here's another experiment with van dyke brown.  These two images were a test on vellum.  I actually made the mistake of not fixing the images, so the brown is much more dark compared to the other van dyke on vellum I tried before.  Anyway... it's a good start to something bigger- I definitely want to try to print more on vellum.  The transparency of it has so many possibilities. 

More on body image.....

Here are a few more images I took a couple weeks ago at the Headlands.   I am continuing my series on body image distortion and the discrepancy between reality and perception on this subject.  I distort certain parts of my body to visualize the distortion that occurs in my mind when I think about my physicality.  I am emulating fashion photography to critique its influence on women.  Any feedback on this project is very welcome.  I took these shots in the evening as the sun was going down, so they have very different moods.  

Gum Printing

Here are some test prints I made while trying to figure out how to work with gum bichromate printing.  I was pretty discouraged for a while.  Working on gum printing was technically very difficult.  I finally realized that printing gum on top of a cyanotype was the best way to go.  The details were getting lost in just a straight-forward gum print.  The very first image of this series is just a straight gum print.  It's a really nice image, but I need to do something else with it.  I haven't quite figured out what yet.  I really like the layering of color these have overall.  Especially the blue and green.  I'm excited to see where this project goes and have my final idea in place.