Experimental | Still alive

Category: Experimental

Sep 07

Modified negative

Got a scratch on your negative?
Don’t toss the scratched negative away, instead consider scratching it further in a more
deliberate manner.
You can carve directly into the negative using any sharp tool, such as an artist’s knife. It works just like drawing and outlining, and can certainly leave one feeling creative.
You can then top it off by coloring the negative using highlighter permanent markers.
In order to work on the negative, it’s a good idea to place it on a light box so you can get a clear view of the image while working on it.

However, you don’t have to wait until your negative is scratched in order to alter it…
just pick up one of your negatives and get to work.
When choosing a negative to modify it’s best if you begin with one that is OK but missing the special spark that makes it a standout picture.
And finally, make sure you don’t alter a negative you really like as obviously this is
an irreversible practice.
Same practice can be performed on any of your unsuccessful reversal film images such as the transparency slide below.

You can find this photo process and many others in my new book:
So Much More than Photography – eBook edition is now on sale for $10.
Get it here

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Posted in Experimental, Film photography modified negative positive slide

Aug 26

Adding a canvas background layer to your photo

This method is a quick and simple way to spice up any photo. The best photo choice to use with this technique is practically any photo you like and want to add a special touch to.
The first thing to do is make a quick painting on canvas, and if this part of the process leaves you feeling intimidated, all I can say is: don’t be. Since all you are doing is creating a background layer for your photo the painting does not need to be a masterpiece, just something that pleases your eye. If it makes you feel better I, myself, had never done any painting on canvas before and had quite a bit of fun experimenting with it.
It’s a good idea to use an unframed canvas panel at
8” X 10” so it will be easy to scan when it’s dry.
You can use any type of paints that work on canvas; I like to use acrylic paints since they
dry quite fast.
Next, scan your work of art at 300dpi and open your photo editor.
Now, open the photo you wish to enhance and make sure your layer palette is visible
(Paintshop Pro: View/Palettes/layers or F8. Photoshop: window/layers or F7).
Place your scanned canvas painting onto a new layer above the photo layer and blend both images by playing with the transparency settings until you like what you see.

You can find this photo process and many others in my new book:
So Much More than Photography – eBook edition is now on sale for $10.
Get it here

Line of palms. Santa Monica. Canvas layer background

Jamestown, Virginia. Canvas layer background

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Posted in Experimental, Photographic art, texture layer background canvas layer photo art

Jun 25

Cyanotype sun printing

Sun printing is a method of printing onto a surface using (yep, you guessed it) UV rays from the sun. Most people use sun printing to print various arrangements on paper by creating a design on a sun print paper, such as leaves and flowers, and exposing it to the sun.
But you can also sun print your negatives.
First thing to do is choose a negative with a good contrast, place it on the sun printing paper, set a piece of glass over it to hold it down and keep it flat (make sure your glass is not coated with a UV blocker!) , and expose it to direct sun.
The exposure time depends on your location, season and time of day, so you’ll have to experiment with it a little. The sun printing paper recommends exposure time of 10-15 minutes, but if you are printing in late afternoon you’ll need around 30 minuets and even more.
The print below was exposed around 1PM for less than 4 minutes.
When the sun exposure is complete, you will need to rinse the print under running water until the water runs clear.
For a final touch you can use a blunt object to distress the edges while the print is still wet.
Now if you don’t shoot film and have no negatives, don’t despair.
Create a negative version of your favorite digital photo and print it out on an inkjet transparency. It will work just like a real negative and even better because you can make it any size you want.

I got my watercolor sun printing paper from Freestyle but most art supply stores have some type of sun prints paper as well.

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Posted in Experimental blue cyanotype negative San Francisco sun print

Jun 20

Distressed and modified prints

Altered images can be a unique addition to various projects, such as collages, altered art, or journals.
And since this method is a type of freeform artistic process, you can torment your photo print any way you wish.
Only one thing to keep in mind before you get your tools ready is that most distressing techniques won’t work as well with homemade inkjet prints, and for best results you should use a photographic print that was printed in a photo lab or a high-end printing service.
You can begin modifying your photographic print by scratching lines onto the prints using an artist knife. Next, use sandpaper to get rid of the gloss appearance, bring out the color beneath the top layer of the print, and give it a truly distressed appearance.
If you feel adventurous and are brave enough, try spattering or even rubbing household bleach onto your print. Using a cotton ball or a sponge, you can pat the bleach in purposely to some areas of your print, or you might prefer to randomly squirt it on at random.
Another thing you can do is get a bleach pen and use it to write or draw on your print. If you can’t find a bleach pen, use a skewer or a tooth pick, dip it in the bleach, and use as a pen.
Note that the bleach, which starts yellow, will quickly turn into white.
If you like the yellowish appearance you will need to wash off the bleach in water just a few seconds after applying it to the print.
In addition you can randomly add acrylic paints or markers and, at last, lightly sand the print again in order to blend the paints into the print.

This process works well with color, sepia ,or black and white prints.

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Posted in Best Photos, Experimental distressed inkjet modification photocopy prints

Jun 15

Download pdf file : Image Transfer 101

The Image Transfer 101 PDF file contains 28 pages of detailed instructions accompanied by descriptive images and sample photos which will guide you through some fun and easy-to-do Image/photo Transfers.
All these photo transfer processes are the product of many experiments, endless trial and errors, I made in the last couple of years. I hope you will find these techniques easy to do and most of all they will inspire you to create your own artistic & beautiful image transfers.

File contents:
Inkjet transfer – Basic image transfer (inkjet) – Perfect photo transfers – Transferring with transparencies – Xerox (photocopy) image transfer – Test transfer – Packing tape transfer – Paint transfer – Mixed media transfer – Transfer to mirror or ceramic tile – Gel Layer transfer – Aluminum foil transfer -Transfer to Polaroid – Paint a transfer – More transfer ideas

IMAGE TRANSFER 101 [PDF]
PRICE: $5

Thank you for your support!

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Posted in Experimental, Image transfer, inkjet transfer 101 download image pdf photo transfer

Apr 30

Aging a color photo with coffee

Aging a color photo is obviously more challenging than making a black and white or a sepia tone image look old – difficult, but not impossible.
Especially if you like coffee.
Now on to the details:
The first step is to un-vibrant (is this a word?) the image so it doesn’t look too vivid. You can do this during scanning or in your image editor by reducing the highlights, saturation, and contrast. Or you can just go for one of your unsuccessful washed-out photos (as you see, unsuccessful doesn’t necessarily mean failed).

The next step is to create an aged looking paper, which I did by using the leftovers of my morning coffee. Really! All you need to do is crumble a paper (I used watercolor paper), soak it in coffee, and let it dry in the sun. Now the same watercolor paper looks like it has seen many years of hardship.

Next, scan the stained paper, open your favorite photo editor and blend it on another layer with your washed out image. And just like before, you will need to play around with the blending and transparency settings until you like what you see.

By the way, if you are not a coffee drinker and prefer tea, no worries; you can do the same process using tea instead of coffee. I’m sure there are many other ways to age a paper such as burning, ink stains, distressed ink, antique solutions, or simply use an actual aged paper from an old book. These are just a few methods to choose from, so simply select whatever works best for you.

As a final touch, you can darken the edges of the photo by using the darken or burn tool in your photo editor.

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Posted in Best Photos, Experimental aging a photo coffee stains downton market street san franscisco

Apr 08

If you don´t have a film scanner then DiY

One thing that I love about film photography is the magic involved with the chemicals to revel what your eyes see against your camera.

I always try to experiment with film, you never know when it is going to end with, last year I created a pinhole panoramic camera I ended with 6 photos from one 120mm film of 6 x 12, a lot of fun. But my problem was in fact that my scanner does not support 120mm film even the new 6×12 frame photo of my pinhole camera.

So I did a little search on flickr and find a cool solution. I did my own film scanner so, my option only to be able to show my experiments was to take a photo from the film. So I created a film scanner using a shoe box I cut the hole and add a 6×6 and 6×12 mask, cut a hole in the top for the flash, and then add some paper to diffuse the light.

Here is the inside of the box, I added 2 layers of wax paper to diffuse the light.

You only need to take a photo of the film and then in Ligtroom or Photoshop invert the colors and have fun. Now you can get a digital copy of your film experiments. This work for me, I know It may not be the best but to share on flickr works fantastic.

Here are one of my experiments using the DiY film scanner

I hope you enjoy this tip, I originally wrote this post on my blog but its in Spanish so I thought it will be cool sharing here the tip. If you need help you can leave a comment on my blog or on my flickr.

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Posted in Experimental, guest blog contributors 120mm 35mm 6x12 6x6 diy film scanner medium format

Mar 06

First Attempt at Mod Podge Transfer

I was so inspired by this site that I had to try this technique. This is a picture of my first attempt at image transfer to canvas using Nitsa’s mod podge technique. I used an image printed from my inkjet (or is it ink jet?) printer on plain copy paper.

Here’s what I did:

I first chose a cool image from one of my magazines, scanned it and converted it to black and white. I played with the contrast until the image looked like an ink stamp.

Then I painted a 12″x16″ canvas board with silver and white acrylic paint and let it dry a couple of hours. I printed out some background clip art and mod podged it to the painted canvas. I smoothed out the background images as best I could with my fingers since I don’t have a brayer.

After 15 minutes I painted a coat of mod podge over the entire canvas. I waited another 15 minutes and applied another mod podge coat.

I let the mod podge dry about 30 minutes. Mod podge dries pretty fast which is a plus because I am super impatient.

With my heart beating fast because I didn’t want to mess up, I brushed the ink side of the black and white image of the man and woman making sure I had an even layer. In hindsight, I think I put too much mod podge.

I carefully held the image over the part of canvas that I wanted to place it. I set it down gently and smoothed it out with my fingers working from center out. I made sure there was good contact ink to canvas contact.

After a couple of hours, I sprayed water onto the paper until I saw the image start to appear through the paper. Then I started gently rubbing the layers of paper off. I think I was rubbing too hard on one small part because some of the ink started to come off. I panicked so I stopped where I was at. I left too much paper on the image which made the image look ghostly.

When it dried it was pretty hazy but I thought if I painted mod podge on it it would look more clear. Well, the image of the couple still looked ghostly. After looking at it for a while, I started to like the ghostly effect. I then really liked it when my kids told me it looked cool.

I am so happy I found this site. Nitsa’s work is amazing and her techniques are simple and fun to do. This is the first blog site I have joined and actually submitted something. Hope you like the piece! Pat ^_^

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Posted in Experimental, Image transfer, guest blog contributors, inkjet transfer acrylic paint canvas image inkjet mixed media mod podge stamp transfer

Jan 08

How to revise a photo

A few days ago I discovered at the bottom of my xerox photocopies stash that for some reason I have a bunch of photocopies that are not mirror copies. As I mostly use these photocopies for image transfers I make sure to print a mirrored version, especially if there is text in the photo.
So clearly these photocopies were not good candidates for image transfer.
OK, now, what can I do with them?
I thought about it for a while and decided to try cutting the photocopies and then assemble them back together but just for fun I will put them back together in a slightly different order.
I chose an 8X10 canvas panel and using Mod Podge I covered it with decorated papers, old newspapers and other found objects. I then chose one of the photocopies; a picture I took a few years ago in Greenwich Village, NY. I randomly cut the picture into 8 different pieces, rearranged the pieces, and pasted onto the background layer, again using Mod Podge. I added watered down Gesso to some areas and and waited for the piece to dry before covereing it with Krylon clear UV protection.
And here it is; another way to present a photo:

BUY THIS ARTWORK

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Posted in Experimental, Photographic art, techniques Greenwich Village mod podge NY photocopy xerox

Sep 25

Mixed Media Image Transfer Directions

1. Using Mod Podge, paste pieces of textured papers and other found objects (such as ticket stabs, stamps old newspaper etc.) onto an 11”X14” canvas panel.
2. Make sure to cover this layer with the Mod Podge so it doesn’t only adhere the papers to the canvas but also protects this layer to all eternity (or at least a few years)
3. Cover this layer with watered-down gesso. It will mute the layer a bit and also will tie the pieces together.
4. Add a thin layer of acrylic paint of your choice. Don’t over do it so it doesn’t overwhelm the other layers.
5. Now to the transfer part. Spread Gel Medium onto your image which in this case is a Xerox copy of a picture taken at a train station in Long Island, New York in the evening when people get off the train to go back home from a long day of work.
6. Put your photo copy which is now covered with gel medium face-down into the canvas on top of the previous layers. I transferred a few copies of the same image.
7. Let it set for a few hours, preferably over night.
8. Wet your fingers and rub the access paper, revealing the image which is now transferred to the new surface.
9. For the final touch you can add text, letters, gesso and paints.
10. Clean up the mess!