body lumens

So I did some experiments earlier on in the year with lumen printing (aka printing with fogged photo paper). Its a really neat process and it's exciting because you never really know how it's going to turn out.

For my roomie's independent study class she decided to do some full body lumen prints. Our professor had some old rolls of really big photo paper that were no longer usable in the traditional way, therefore were perfect for lumen printing. Heres what she came up with . . .

we unrolled the paper in our dark hallway and carried it out covered in a blanket. then we secured the corners with some heavy books. When she was ready I whipped the blanket off and she threw herself down onto the paper. so dramatic.

the way the sun was slanted created a weird distorted ghost image

each print took about 15 minutes till they were ready to being in

for this one she lay face down (think yoga child pose ) and the humidity from her eyes, nose, and mouth left marks on the paper . it looks so creepy!

during our last print a dumpster pulled up next to us for moving day. they must have thought we were crazy


Overall her prints turned out pretty cool and it was interesting to see certain details show up. In one print her feet turned a completely different color and various details of her face and ears would show up in other prints. Some of them were downright eerie!! Anyways, definitely a fun experiment.

more leaf prints!

I was finally able to make some more of these once the sun came out again . . .


All my leaf prints are from the same type of leaves and even the same location, but they look so different!


To learn how to make these prints see my previous post

leaf print

Sunny days have finally come!! I've been waiting for some nice weather so that I could do some more experimenting with lumen prints as well as this crazy photosynthesis printing technique that I found at alternativephotography.com.

I had been taking some walks around campus and I found these huge cabbage-like leaves that I felt would be perfect to use for my leaf print. What you do is take a broad green leaf and place a photo positve on top of it and sandwhich them between a hard surface and some plexiglass/glass. Leave the leaf/positive sandwich out in the direct sun for at least a day (until the parts of the leaf you can see have turned a yellowish or brownish white.



I was a bit skeptical when I took my leaf inside to unveil it, it just looked like the leaf was dying or something, but when I pulled off my positive, the parts that were dark and blocked from the sun by my positive were still the dark green of the leaf and all the light areas had turned white with the bleaching of the sun. It worked!! Im not sure how the print will last, I've now sandwhich my delicate leaf inbetween some museum board, but I plan on scanning it soon.

This process is amazing yet so simple! Who would have thought you could print photographic images directly onto leaves using nothing but good ol mother nature? Anyways, this print was an experiment to see if these leaves were the proper canvas and to see if this process actually works, but I plan on doing a series of these leaf prints with some new images I've been planning. Just gotta keep praying for sunshine!

dont throw away that fogged paper!

Got fogged paper? Dont toss it, make some sweet prints!
These are some colorful prints I made with random objects I found in my kitchen . . .




My roomate showed me this really cool photographic process called lumen printing, and it's super easy to do! All you need is fogged photo paper (any kind, old works best) and some natural sunshine. (And if you wanna get fancy, a board and some plexiglas for sandwiching flat objects) You can lay or sandwich flat plants or any interesting objects you have lying around on top of your fogged paper and expose it to the sun from 30 minutes to 4 hours (iv really only done 30-60 minutes and they turned out great. Using the plexiglas to flatten your plants/flat objects on top of the paper ensures a little more detail and less blur from sun movement, but if you just lay them down you can get a softer, more abstract effect. This website has more detailed instructions as well as lots of other really cool alternative printing processes.

It really fun seeing what colors you get, all papers seem to be different. Also, it seems color changes based on the humidity and temperature of the object as well. Organic objects seem to produce a wider range of color.

have fun and waste not!

cuz rives bfk is the best!

Rives bfk is good for me!
(one of my most recent prints on my favorite eco-friendly paper:)

So I'm a print media major and I do a lot of screen printing. I've been screen printing for a few years now and I've found that I really like using a nice sturdy, smooth paper. Rives BFK is my favorite, but I got to wondering, is it eco-friendly? I had never really thought about it before and since I use so much of it, I decided to do a little research. If my search yielded bad results I felt I would have to find a new favorite :( . . .

Luckily for me and the environment Rives BFK as well as the slightly cheaper alternative Arches, are fairly eco-friendly! yeah!

Rives BFK and Arches paper companies proudly bear these three symbols

This symbol means that the paper mill does not use chlorine bleaching when producing their papers.
This symbol means the mill is ISO 14001 certified. I had to look it up to what that means, but basically it means that they comply to high qulaity environmental standards . This certification is supported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
This symbol means that no trees are used to create the paper, the pulp is made from 100% cotton.

Here are my research sources if you wanna check em out.
Legion Papers
Master Control