Beginning of August

It is almost midnight on Monday, August 3rd, 2020, and I am sitting down to write a short entry for today. I lost my father last year, and it felt as if I had fallen off a cliff. In my family we all struggled to accept his loss, and there has not been a single day when I haven't thought of him. When it gets quiet, such as at this minute, when the household is asleep, the feeling of sadness is once again overwhelming. There was so much I should have done to improve our relationship, and I didn't. About this time, from 10 to 11 p.m., I would hear my father stumbling as he rose from his chair in the living room and slowly walked towards his bedroom. Sometimes I would wish him good night if my door was open, but most of the time, I just heard him shamble past. I think at times that he is still in the living room, sleeping on his chair. He was so sick, and we didn't find out what he had until the end, when it was too late.

During the past month and a half I have been preparing for my upcoming courses. I am almost done with all the material I need, and I think things will go well. They have to given how terribly they went last semester. We're almost done and will then procede to the real task at hand.

Today I spent most of the day, before the oppressive heat closed in (we were in the upper 90s again in southern California) working on my photography. Today I wanted to experiment with Lumen prints. These are obtained by using photo paper, and you can proceed with different methods. One, you can place objects on this paper, then squeeze them down with a pane of glass and leave them out in the sunlight and have an image come up which can then be inverted. Or, you can expose the paper in a regular camera using the widest aperture setting you can, and then, take the exposed paper and scan and invert. Either way, exposure are typically around 20 minutes in direct sunlight.

I practiced with both techniques today. First, I cut up some 8x10 sheets of Arista RC multigrade paper into 4x5 pieces and put them into the holders. I then brought out my 4x5 Busch Pressman camera and opened up the aperture and composed a scene in flowers. Given the shallow depth of field with the aperture of f4.7 that I was using, I focused on one particular flower, throwing the rest out of focus. I then loaded the film holder, took out the slide and left the shutter open for 20 minutes or more. A suggestion found on the web is that we should moisten the paper before we expose it, but I do not want drops of water trickling down into the lens, so I just barely moisten it with a paper towel. It seemed to work.

Here is the latent image for one example:

I have to admit, I editing this image a little. I wish I had preserved the original. When I removed it from the film holder, and once again, no need for a darkroom, I do it out in the open, but maybe look for a shaded area under a tree, the paper and image had a bluish milk of magnesia color, but the image was visible. When I scanned it and then edited, I just eliminated the color cast (the milkiness) and desaturated, and also, increased the contrast. Then, using a primitive photo editing program I have on my Mac, not Photoshop, not Lightroom, I don't have those programs, I inverted it and obtained the following:

The texture is very grainy, I know, but I am very pleased with the image. With Lumen prints, once again, the chief advantage is that you don't need to process in any chemicals. You just have to settle for a long exposure, then invert the image file once you have scanned it. Maybe the texture or graininess comes from the type of paper I was using, or else, the low resolution at which I scanned, which was 1200 dpi, or maybe some other factor. I still love the fact that I could obtain something, and it is actually very respectable. It isn't something I would display in a gallery, but it constitutes successful photographic exploration on my part.

I then decided to try to contact print a 4x4 black and white negative I had. I had taken this shot with film last year, during a trip to UCLA. It is of a building in Westwood village. I bought photo display frames from the local Dollar Tree, and inserted my negative on top of my photo paper, then put it in the frame. What was my result?

I obtained something after about 30 minutes of exposure. You might ask, why the blur? Is the original negative blurry? No, I had the frame propped up facing the sun, and it fell down during the exposure, so I am sure the negative moved around. But, I think it works, I can contact print. I'll try this with one of my lousy 8x10 negatives, the ones I have been obtaining with my 8x10 pinhole camera.

Finally, I wanted to have more depth of field, but Lumen prints need light, dammit (as Bones McCoy on Star Trek would say), so if I step it down, won't I have to increase the exposure times greatly? Will, I framed a scene in the front yard, with the late afternoon sun, and yes, while the sun was declining on the horizon, it was still hot as a furnace and it still was lighting the scene directly. I forgot to wet the photo paper, however, but I did use an aperture of f8, and I did leave it for twice the time I would ordinarily use, which in this case, was a total of about 45 minutes. It worked! Not the composition, I know that is lousy, but I did obtain an image.

So, I can play around hopefully in the next few days with Lumen exposures. As long as we have to endure the heat, I might as well do something with photography. Maybe during the next few days I will try to go to one of the local botanical gardens to take photos, if the temperatures descend to the 80s. I hope so.

It is almost midnight so I will take my leave. Buenas noches, Daddy.