My Grandfather Kenny Robbins and his Harley Davidson

While cleaning the studio today I stumbled across a creased and aged envelope….tucked inside and marked in my Grandmother’s steady hand, were B&W 6×9 negatives shot by my Grandfather, Kenneth Robbins. Sadly my Grandfather died long before I was ever born.

He was a major Photography enthusiast and often made movies as well of my family, many date back to the 1920′s. It is quiet a legacy he left us with his imagery. It was through his images that I learned how to observe light and to appreciate Photography as a Fine Art.

So today, while wet mount scanning these delicate old negatives, it struck me how incredible it is that here I sit in the year 2011, scanning and revealing images that my Grandfather shot in 1937. Photos that give me a peek at the early days of my Mother’s life…of my own eyes.

After beating my head to design a proper Poster to market the collection an amazing college friend from Ringling stepped in and created this incredible marketing package for me. Curry Mendes’ skills are endless and to him I am ever grateful.

You can catch “Eine Amerikanische Perspektive” at the Ladenburg Rathaus from
15 October thru 29 November 2010.

So many people have been saying, “Oh those iPhone image are so cool but what can you really do with them?” Well, that is simple you use software called Genuine Fractals to enlarge them. It is simple.

OK so…I have created the larger image files, now what? Well, you create digital negatives. Another thing I have been in love with. After getting much backlash in the world that Digital Photography is some how a lesser craft…but that is another story.

While creating all this…my husband AKA “Mad Photo Scientist” was mixing up a batch of Albumen
. We are now well known at the local farm for buying flats and flats of eggs for our “Experiments.” We then “Float” the paper in the Albumen mix, remove all air bubbles and hang to dry. We use our furnace room so the paper dries in minutes. Now you have your own handmade Photosensitive paper.

Now with the introduction of classically made paper and modern negative….throw in a dash of UV light and Voila….You have an Albumen print.

It’s all very exciting. I find the possibilities are endless in Photography…as they say you are only limited by your creativity…and how long you can stand the smell of eggs.

OK, so it has also been raining in Biblical proportions  for weeks now and my wandering has been cut short, but these process’ are turning out to be great rainy day projects.

Simply put I am being positive about all this negative weather and turning some of my digital images into negatives that I can use to create contact prints.

So far the experiment has been a load of fun and not that tricky at all.  Here is the result of my first attempt…of course there are some kinks that need to be worked out, but….isn’t that really the fun part?

Due to time constraints, my husband and I shot in tandem, while I was developing a shot or preparing a late he was exposing a plate and visa versa. This process seemed to work well and we were able to, with a very patient model, to produce 4 plates in 2 hours. A very happy Herman was able to leave for Belgium with a varnished plate in hand.

He and his lovely wife did a small slideshow presentation of us at work and well….Herman just hanging around.

http://picasaweb.google.fr/h.riachuelo/AmbrotypePhotography#slideshow/5459213582537943090

I hope you enjoy it…and while I have your attention, make sure to check out some of Herman’s amazing work on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogWIAszSF78

In the past few months we have added a new skill to the Boston Thek Imagery bag O tricks, Wet Plate Alternative Process. It has become a bit of an obsession with us here in the studio. Each evening we spend many hours racing between the studio with it’s still life set up and the darkroom.

CollodionWet Plate might be a timeless process, but there is definitely and finite amount of time for each shot. Once you have a prepared plate for the Ambrotype, you have to get it into the camera and exposed before you loose everything in the ether from which it came.

In my experience, you learn to clean glass very well in the process of learning, well…this historic process. There are many small factors that can go wrong when pouring and preparing a plate. Sagging Collodion to hot finger marks from handling, dust and improperly cleaned glass to not letting the Collodion dry long enough thus causing the image to peel from the plate.

Then there are no guarantees once you’ve taken the shot. Will the image be properly exposed? Will you miss a spot with the developer? The fearful questions are endless but so is the excitement of producing a perfect plate.

This process is an enigma, it certainly has a mind of it’s own….

With all that said…here is my best result to date. A still life of snowdrops I plucked along my way through the thawing fields around my town.

We will continue to keep adding to our photographic bag of tricks.

Trust me, even though we didn’t carry our gear up the side of the mountain like many skiers did, we had plenty a work out schlepping around in that deep snow.

As they say there are always more than one way to skin a cat.

NOW, what do I do…with no patience and a box of beautiful color negatives begging to be seen.  Think woman think!  Just then I thought, if I had a light table perhaps I could set up the tripod and shoot them, in that way digitizing them.  IF I had a light table…

I set about and did a little bit of online searching and settled upon a light box to save space in the studio.  Being a lover of French red wine, I have a surplus of wooden wine boxes, so I had found the foundation for my project.

After a visit to the hardware store I found a couple florescent light bars and a sheet of plexy glass.  After cutting the plexy to fit the box top I wrapped it with heavy tracing paper to diffuse the light.

Cutting 2 holes for the cables, I then affixed the light bars inside the box and fed the cords to the outlet. I put a few pictures together to show you the finished results. The whole project at time of assembly must have taken all of 30 minutes.

I haven’t attempted shooting negatives on the light box yet, but I thought this small project might be interesting to others who might find themselves in this same shocking predicament.

There is always more than one way to shed some light on the situation.  If you too are interesting in creating a box of light of your own here are a few get web pages to follow.

DIY Light Tables

Even more DIY Light Tables