Whats Outside....

Catching up on some reading but these are some images that I took of my table outside and what is happening. Also I sent out two rolls of film today. Should have those by the weekend to play with and I will keep photographing during the week.

Take a look:

Yesterdays Adventure

Here is a video that was made yesterday showing my process of coating a paper to placing the paper outside and letting it expose. (The video seems to not want to upload. Ill have to play around with it to see why it is not appearing on the blog)

I am going to take the camera out and photograph what is already happening on the paper because the color of the leaves themselves are fascinating and the marks that have already been left are wonderful. So far the non-coated paper looks better than the beet coated side as far as the reactions to the fall colors. Really exciting process I have adopted here. I also have my jars outside and have been for about two weeks now and I will photograph those again today. Some condensation is happening and I have decided since they are air tight containers that I would open them slightly to allow air inside for the foods to decompose slightly faster. So they will be shot today with the camera and then hopefully mid-late this week again with more defining change.

Here are some images of what is happening outside on the prepared table:

Update of goals:

Plan to attend Mass MOCA on November 2nd. 

Plan to set the black and white darkroom up and do some printing again and using leaves this time. 

Plan to continue documenting 

Plan to play with juices more like the lemon juice experiment I did but maybe not even coat the paper. 

Plan to make large prints of swatches

Plan to make a ton of small swatches and set them outside for a couple weeks again, or even throw them or let them blow away......

Plan to enter into at least one show

Study leaves for fall again....

Be more direct and concise with writing 

Next paper outline completely, get an editor, make it shorter

Read all material recently researched on solipsistic, alchemy, and disenchantment along with science, the birth of the photograph and others. 

Dirt....

So here are some quick scans. Again no edits. These are large files and I will be printing them, come the colder days when my production may slow down, large and cant wait to see how they look. These swatches were left in my garden and coated with the remaining emulsions I had from last big exposure. They were left outside for about a week and a half and they enjoyed some heavy rain as well. I am very excited to edit these but wanted to throw a tease up before ending my day.
The way the swatches turned out it seems that almost all the emulsions, such as the beet juice, was just washed off. This brings me back to my discussion I had with Claudia.....do I really need to coat the paper? Can I make marks without a coat? That being said...JUST NOW by writing that I have decided to change my next task. Tomorrow I had planned to juice some beets and coat a large sheet of rolled paper to set outside as the leaves fall from my maple tree and get tossed around, rain etc. what kind of marks would be made. Instead of taking a sheet of paper to cover the entire board I have to expose on I will only use half with beet juice and half without and just paper and see what kind of impressions and marks the leaves will leave without any kind of "aid".
The goal tomorrow is to take a video of me preparing, coating, and exposing the paper in my backyard. I will put the video up on Sunday which will be my next big work day along with Monday, yay for Holidays.

Some of these swatches still have dirt on them and some I did not scan because I didnt think they had any real marks. I havent scrapped off all the dirt to just leave the paper. These scans I thought it was necessary to leave them how the came and a shake but not deliberately changing what sticks. Maybe Ill come back to those later.

Take a look at the garden swatches:

This is from the other day. Scans from rain and lemon juice that I captured on a beet emulsion. 

This is of rain and one side of the paper being wet and the other dry and so you can see the pooling that started on the wet side and the dry side captured the individual drops. 

This image is of the beet emulsion and then I sprayed a lemon half on the paper to see how the beets would react to the citrus. I think I want to play with this idea a little more. Juicing on a juice that is used to capture the juice....hmmmmmmm

This last image is of a heavy rain and a quick step outside to capture the rain drops. All these images have videos in earlier posts if you are interested in seeing them. 

I was really happy to come across this artist while reading Art and Science Now.

Check him out. Daro Montag

Here is a link to a You Tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffq-Kuw_Kzo#!

Here is a link to view some his extraordinary work: http://www.microbialart.com/galleries/daro-montag/

Another Productive Day.

Documenting the rain today....very exciting. I am also really excited about the first couple videos I produced. I plan on setting aside a day to print some of these scans larger to see how they look, of course that difference wont be quite visible on the blog but it will be good for next residency and my meeting with my mentor. These videos should be in order from the beginning. I have some paper outside in my garden that I will take up tomorrow, let dry, and scan and I have a large sheet of white paper I have left out my back steps that should have some nice marks at this point.

I did another photo shoot. I am experimenting now with putting the last bit of fruit from cutting or eating into a Ball jar and then I am going to document its decomposing stages. I have a banana peel, apple, celery, and red onion. I look forward to seeing the changes. I think I will put them outside and then photograph them each day, should changes be visible. here is a photo:

While preparing paper I decided  to document my table and its appearance. Here is the image of the table and then I took a shot from a side angle from above with only natural light so the perspective is completely different. 

 I played with some husk cherry shells I had and thought they would be a nice mark maker for this work. I placed some on paper and let sit and I put glass over one and let it sit.

My results:

husk cherry shells and glass

husk cherry shells with no glass

citrus sprayed paper, still drying

 rain paper dried and quite intriguing.

All results on a board fully drying

So apparently I don't know how to load film. Loaded my film backwards and both rolls were blank. Hard work, lost. Feeling really dumb and inadequate. So I will have to have another photo session this weekend and hope that I can do it right this time. Feeling frustrated right now. Apparently I can only do it right the first time. I have a busy weekend......

Now that I am scanning such small material I have to make better scans to then make large prints with in the next couple weeks. Very excited about this work.

Swatches edited:

Sent two rolls of film out today and hope to get it back within the week and develop those negatives. Very excited to see what came of my photo shoot so that I can determine if it something I am going to continue with. I will be editing some images and posting them shortly from my last exposure.

So I go some marks from the grapes that I left on a leaf from this weekend, here is the image:

I had the discussion with a mentor of mine about why I color the paper? What is the importance so this is a test of a large sheet of 140lb watercolor paper at the bottom of my steps that is recording my dogs and I and our daily acts of going up and down the steps. I am hoping it will go through some different weather patterns and see what that does to the paper. This I will leave out for some weeks.

So I just made some dipped swatches with my old emulsions from some time ago. The different in the emulsions age is interesting now and I am curious how the paper and color will react given its older than it was when I first made it. I placed all the papers in the dirt some what in the garden that is at its end. I will leave these out I think for at least a week and see what kind of marks are made from them. 

Scans again

So here are the tests I have made for the day. I have decided two things are certain, I love to expose the anthotypes without drying the paper completely and I really am attracted to the small tests. There is something about the size when making them that creates a more cellular and impressive print to me than me trying to compose on a larger sheet of paper. From this I will scan and my next step is to make some large prints of these smaller cellular scans and see how they look large. This type of detail is not obtainable through a larger print because this a very intimate scale. I have a love for the connection of the paper, juice, and produce on top and how it they all feed off each other. These images are done from three types a beet and wine mix and a beet and purple potato mix along with a sprayed beet mix. The type of absorbent effect I get from these wet prints did not happen completely on these because of the fact that I exposed the dry material that I  have had in the house from the last exposures that I wanted to use again to see what kind of images they would yield. This produce will then be composted and used to then create soil for the idea of growing my own beets in my house so that all my materials will be coming solely from my house. This will give me a larger connection with my material and images.
This is my set up from earlier today:
It is important to note that the images you saw yesterday on the glass that I was photographing in the basement that material was just tossed on the papers coated here ready to expose. I did not place them down strategically I simply dropped the glass down and let all the material fall off and left it at that. I am trying to step away from control for these images and making it more about process than anything.

These are just scanned and not edited at all.

These are from the sprayed beets:

These images are from the beet and purple potato mix:

This is a close up of this image scanned again because I thought it was interesting. 

These images are from the beet and wine mix: