The Language of flowers - Final Integrated Assignment

After much deliberation I have come up with a new concept for the end of year exhibition, part of the London exhibition and F.I.A. Following themes from previous assignment I chose to research the area of Flora. This has led to the fascinating language of flowers. Before technology took over the act of courting an admirer was far more subtle. The use of flowers could be used to contact an admirer to make your intentions clear. This was the art of Floriography which became extremely popular in the Victorian period. Thought to have originated in Turkey in the 17th Century as a way for illiterate concubine women to communicate. This then developed into the secret language of flowers when visiting ladies of Europe took an interest in the subject. This culminated in Louise Cortambert writing the believed first book of meaning of flowers, called Le Language des Fleurs. In 1884 Jean Marsh wrote a book called The Language of Flowers which was illustrated by Kate Greenaway, which became the standard source of Victorian flower meanings.




Today we have forgotten many of these hidden meanings apart from the obvious, the red rose, meaning passion, the symbol of many a valentines message.
It was this obvious symbol that caught my interests. My wife had recently shown me a dried rose that she  had kept from the valentines day I asked her for her hand. The rose has even more importance to us as it's 25 years ago that I gave her this rose.  I took the image below to see if this could be a concept of interest.

For some time I have been wanting to capture images that have been influenced by Nick Night's book Flora, but put my own twist on it. Knight was drawn to the beauty of the pressed flowers at the National History museum. This project took him three and a half years to complete choosing 46 visually stunning samples from a possible six million.


 I'm drawn to his approach, using a high key background light where the flat object is laid on top.

Conclusion

I was really pleased with the outcome of the rose image. This has provided the confidence to further investigate the possibilities of this project. This may not be the way I will finally present the images as I want to try both the Gum Bichromate process and Fuji Polaroid lifts.

Change in Direction - Final Integrated Assignment

 Following a tutorial with the course leader I decided on a change in direction. Although I had received positive feedback for the positive paper test there was a question mark over the theme I had chosen. There was a suggestion that the combination of the two was a little boring. Although I didn't entirely agree I could see that it may not be as good as the work I produced for last years exhibition. So a rethink is required!!

Test 1 Direct Positive Paper - Final Integrated Assignment

For sometime now I have been eager to test Harman's Direct Positive Paper. This is to be used later in conjunction  with the Gum Bichromate process.  This Positive paper is primary used in Pinhole photography due to it's very slow speed  around ISO 3. A sheet of paper can be exposed and developed under safety light (red) conditions  which will produce a positive image without the need for a negative. However, this paper can also be utilised by users of large format cameras very effectively. With this in mind and along with the experiment already carried out in the last assignment with Petzval lens, I wanted to see what would happen. The Petzval lens was designed for use with collodion which, like these direct positive papers, are slow acting emulsions. Normally for use with modern day lenses the paper requires some pre-flashing (exposing to light before an image is taken to placated the contract characteristic of the paper). This can be done in camera or with the use of a photographic enlarger. There is a whole lot of testing to be carried out to find the optimum, but a rough rule of thumb, when carrying out research into this subject seemed to suggests 2 seconds. Harman produce a very useful fact sheet: http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/2010827171602436.pdf


The lens I used had an aperture of f4 with no shutter. So using a small cardboard box as a manual shutter I took a light reading using ISO 3. I need a shutter speed of 2 seconds so that I could physically achieve an accurate  time. I had to wait for the right moment when the light was just right so all three restrictions were in place. The subject was of a Chinese cat that I was using for my Superstitions theme. I placed the cat on a white scooped background. The images  are below:

Both these images had a 2 second exposure. However, how accurate that two second was is anybodies guess as this was as described above a complete manual process. Looking at the picture the top image must have had a slightly longer exposure as it slightly lighter. Both were developed at the same time in the darkroom.


2 minuets in Ilford Multigrade paper developer
Stop Bath of 2 half minuets
1 minuet in Rapid Fix
Wash for an hour.


Yes 1 hour washing, this was following the recommendation from Harman. The images above doesn't show it but there was a slight pinkness to the paper and requires the washing for this amount of time to get rid of  it.


Conclusion


I am really pleased with the results, there is a lot of tonality in both images. Out of interest at the time of taking these images I took one using Adox CMS 100 film using a conventional Schneider 210 mm lens set to its widest aperture of f5.6. The tonality is very comparable. However, the characteristic bokeh of the petzval lens is lost which I find fascinating but have no answers as to why it does not appear. Also, the paper will switch the images left to right as the negative image below demonstrate the correct positioning of the arm.