DIY film processing

Photography is technically very simple.

It has to be – people don’t suddenly invent complex processes – they start with simple ideas that get refined over time and use to be complex.  Fox Talbot was a country gent experimenting with very basic equipment and ideas – by our standards.

We have already looked at how simple a camera can be – the processing the film uses very basic ingredients too.  How basic? How about processing both B&W and colour film in caffeine?

I looked these site out this morning for an ex-student who is now at the AUCB – thought you might be interested.

http://www.shutterbug.com/techniques/film_processing/0903sb_coffee/

http://www.lomography.com/magazine/tipster/2009/03/21/diy-c-41-film-coffee-process

http://www.foundphotography.com/2009/05/receipe-for-processing-film-with-coffee-aka-caffenol/

Have also dug out some links for older processes – it may seem irrelevant, but some of these vintage techniques have a great sense of style, and many of them are coming back. Easy enough to recreate the feel of many of them digitally, too.  Some reference to older and experimental processes also useful in your workbooks…  If nothing else, you should be aware of Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre.

A really good site is part of the V&A website -  http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/ – I often subject new classes to this, so you may well have got off lightly.   It isn’t just historical – some good contemporary work too, but it does include brief explanations of historical processes.  If you are tempted – and some, like cyanotype – are very easy and safe to do, and for which the materials can be bought in kit form – many of the processes are described at http://www.alternativephotography.com/index.html.

Kits for processes like cyanotype (seaweed, anyone?) can be found here.  Have a look for Anna Atkins in the V&A website.  (Susan Derges and Adam Fuss for more up to date work).  Photogrammes can be created with digital scanners too – just remember to clean the glass afterwards!

Anna Atkins

Next week – making your own scanning electron microscope for those really quite close up shots….

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