Canvas to the Imagination

Christopher and I made a second attempt at double-exposing film with our holgas. It was Chris’ idea to take a different approach than our first attempt, which involved shooting each frame in the same moment. This time he shot the film first in his holga, rerolled it back to the beginning, then gave it to me to shoot in my own camera. I didn’t know what sort of imagery was already on the film when I took my pictures, but I was instructed to take portraits.

I like the mix of plant imagery overlapping the portraits and the way they create variations in lighting and colour that slightly obscure the subjects features. It reminds me of what I do mixing textures with human figures in my photoshop work. I’m happy with the results of this second attempt, and it’s interesting to compare these to our first roll of film based upon the different approach we took. Hopefully we can explore this idea further in future.

This is one of my favorite of the liquid light prints because the photographic image is perfectly suited to the random shape of the stone. I also like how the brush strokes from applying the liquid light are very visible .

Years ago when I still had my own darkroom to play around in, I experimented with alternative ways of printing my photos. One of my favorite processes at the time was working with “Liquid Light”, a silver-gelatin photo emulsion made by Rockland Colloid Corp. The product can be applied to a variety of surfaces such as wood, glass, metal, stone, plastic or paper, then exposed and processed as a regular print. Depending upon the quality of the chosen image and the printing surface, the prints have a good tonal range with highlight areas revealing the texture and color of the material underneath.

Using the liquid light emulsion I created ten prints on stone shingles featuring figures I had photographed in graveyards. Each shingle came oddly sized, so part of the challenge of making the prints was matching an image to an irregularly shaped surface. I was very pleased with the results of this project because the textured stone surface was the perfect compliment to the graveyard images, and enhanced the look of the photos.

Working with liquid light can be tricky because it is a process that requires much experimentation and patience to figure out how to properly coat a surface as well as the ideal exposure for printing. The effect of the emulsion varies according to the surface it is applied and sometimes it takes many coats to make a good quality print. I mainly experimented with stone surfaces, which can be reused numerous times by removing the emulsion with hot water if the exposure doesn’t work out.