Posts Tagged ‘Slovenija’
From my latest exhibition in Castle Rajhenburg
My dearest followers,
here is my newest video about the latest opening of the exhibition I had. It will be open for the whole year, until September 2017, which is cool, because the location is on my way to skylight Studio Pelikan, so next time that I will have a workshop I could bring the group to the exhibition.
Grad Rajhenburg, Brestanica, Slovenia
Curator: Nina Sotelšek
Organiser: Krško Cultural Centre
Exhibition closes: September 2017
On more personal note, I thank you all for the kind thoughts of support you have send it to me. I am getting back on track, better then ever. Expect more videos to be published this week, more photographs to be made and expect the world to be saved! Because Topshit does happen!
Postcards for my patreons!
Dear readers of my blog,
my videos and this blog is supported by wonderful people who donate me every month a certain amount of money. I have 38 pateons already and last time that I was in Berlin, where I had a workshop, I decidd to send top 25 patreons a poscard from Berlin. Unfortunately to write all the postcards it took me more then two hours and that time I didn’t had, so I’ve decided it to send postcards from home. I hope you received them.
If you want to give me a tip monthy, please visit: https://www.patreon.com/borutpeterlin
Thank you for the support and hlp spreading topshit all over the world! Topshit happens!
Borut
Unbroken Tree Spirit / Retouched Wet Plate Collodion Negative
Dear readers of my blog, I am very late with my production of videos. I have great excuses, but you do not follow this blog because of great excuses, so I will spare you 🙂
I think this video is alright. It took me two days to upload it, because of technical issues, but I’m satisfied with it. Only today I’ve noticed I haven’t used any drone shots, too bad.
For wet plate collodion photographers there will be interesting the following example. In the video I’ve said that at the first test the fog appeared because I waited too long before subbing the plate to silver nitrate. Actually I’ve recoded the explanations, but it is too long and boring, so I’ve edit it out. I can tell you now why I knew what is the cause of fogging. Please observe corners. Only in corner number 4 there is no fog. OK, there is some fog, but that fog is made out of sharp lines, meaning the plate was not cleaned enough. Other fog is obviously different. Corner number 4 is the corner where I’ve poured off my collodion off the plate, meaning that was the most fresh collodion. On other edges and corners fog is spreading toward the edge, from centre toward the edge. That is very clear sign of drying collodion, before the plate went to silver bath. The drying of sensitised plate looks different, very different. So my advice to you is to learn with every failed plate and every successful plate. Believe me, it is very likely that I have made much more foggy plates then you, but I have learned by doing it, so now I can do it either at temperatures of -9C (link) or at + 30C (link). Just do it and fail miserably, that is the only way to make it happen.
As you imagine to make this videos it takes a lot of time and because I’m a professional photographer, I need to justify the time investment, so I need to sell my photographs. I thank you for bidding, sharing my videos, commenting, subscribing and basically all the attention this social network is giving me. It’s my dream job and I have more to come! My prints became quite expensive (THANK YOU), but if you still want to give me a tip and buy me a cup of tea every month, you can visit THIS SITE and become my patreon.
Transcending reality in wet plate collodion / Vlog E02, S01
Dear followers,
as I’ve promised I’m publishing my third episode (I count also the episode zero) of my vlog while pursuing my goal to publish an artist photo-book. Of course, the theme of my book will be Kočevski rog woodland and this time I went to one of the most beautiful places, Ponikve valley.
I was wondering how long should my vlog videos be and what should be the mix of entertainment and informative content. This is what I think it’s good. Please let me know your opinion. In each episode I will include a tip or two about the process, but the main topic will be artistic vision, composition, asking questions and the search for answers. Just don’t ask me to do camera review blogs, they are boring. Photography and cameras is like traveling and wheels. It is related, but not dependent upon. I will do a book review, here and there, but not one of those 100 famous photographers everybody know. I will rather do a review of work that nobody knows, like I’ve done from Peter Župnik, Herman Pivk and many others. Basically photographers whose quality does belong on top 100 list, but they will never be world famous photographers, because of circumstances.
I’ve described my intention in the previous blog post, but let me highlight that I haven’t realised before, but all the likes and shares are well important, since the large social network is the guarantee that my book will actually be published, so thank you in advance! So if you think this content is worthy, please press like and share it. If I’ve made your day, please you could buy me a cup of tea every month via my PATREON page and if you could afford, thank you for bidding on my Ebay auction.
The print on sale is an albumen print, toned with gold toner, from wet plate collodion negative. It’s listed on EBAY.
LINK to “THE BRANCH” Ebay listing
LINK to the “TWO TREES” Ebay listing
I thank David Cutter for the music and Fiona Cambell for the disclaimer voice.
How to Publish a PhotoBook – Vlog E01/S01
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Dear followers,
I’ve been doing photography since I was a kid, from age 11 and when I was studying photography at FAMU Academy in Prague, we had to submit finalised project in a book form. I didn’t had the money for a book binder, so I’ve done it myself. I wasn’t a good bookbinder, but I loved the process of book making. I knew then that I want to do more books, I knew I love it, it’s perfect medium for my photography!
Fast forward 21 years later I’ve made about 30 handmade books, but I’ve published only one book, the book Tales from Gorjanci Hills and here is the link to the images. Technical note for photographers: those images are all shot on 6×7 format colour negative film! It was selectively illuminated and all done in one go. It took me 30-60 minutes for a single shot and because I wasn’t sure what has film recorded I repeated the take, so it was very slow progress.
Anyway all those years I tried to publish a book. I got great reviews and invitations for show, my work is published in many books if I mention few: Fabrica 10: From Chaos to Order and Back, Generation “74” and numerous art catalogues and magazines like Museum Duolun from Shanghai, Days Japan from Tokio, Nikon magazine, …
But as I’ve expressed myself frustratingly, I did not managed to publish an art book of my own. Now this is going to change. Today is 14th of May 2016. In one year time I will publish an art book of my own. My cunning plan is revealed in the video. The information that I saved for my next video is that I am not intending to do a video that will be a checklist of to-do list, no Sir, but I will make a video journal of my weekly steps in making the book published.
I was thinking which book should I publish first and on the end I’ve decided that if I want to make this vlog really interesting I have to start from scratch. I am starting a episode 01 of the series 01 without a single photograph taken. Don’t worry everything else is ready. On Monday rain will stop and then I’m off the leash!
Please do share the video, press like, subscribe and if you can afford to buy me one tea per month, please visit my patreon page. Lastly let me say I can’t answer all the email questions about the process, but I do answer to all the questions asked by my patrons, which is a great deal for 1$ a month support.
PS: To all my fellow european wet platers, I hope you will have a great time in Eindhoven at European Collodion Weekend, I am not coming because the very next weekend I’m traveling to Barcelona to Revela-T festival, where I have two workshops and a demonstration. Next year I will come to ECW with the new book, I’m sure of that!
PPS: Disclaimer voice by Fiona Campbell.
From barbed wired EU border, with love…
Some time ago I’ve made a video about barbed wired EU border (link) and here is another episode from the project. I do not know exactly how will it developed, but I feel the need to document the time and place where I live. I enjoy these expeditions so much. Being away from everyone, from everything doing photography, but not being sure if anybody including myself needs those images. As a professional photographer I’ve developed disfunctionality because photography as a medium is the main source of income and although this is a good thing in the manner I am entitled to devote most of my time to the medium it also creates huge aberration in the process of evaluating the work that I do. This is the aberration I’m mentioning, but I have blind faith that this will pay for my retirement, because social security surely will not.
My next step is to make prints out of the negatives. It will be very different then those digitally converted reproductions, but about that in the next video.
Wet Plate Collodion at -9C, plus carbon print process!
So I’ve received a request if I’m selling also ambrotypes. I don’t because ambrotypes are unique, there is only one and once it’s sold I will never see it again. But I’ve replied that I do sell pre-ordered ambrotype. So when I will go outside next time, I can make an additional ambrotype for a client. If the client likes it, he or she buys it, if not, no problem at all, no questions asked. And pre-ordered ambrotype is also sold for much less I would usually charge.
So here is the result. The client asked if he can buy it in wooden box and so I’ve done some research, I’ve made a boxe from pine-wood and even blast-sanded it. It’s massive wood (not glued wood boards) and pine wood is known for it’s tensions, so it bended. For the next box I’ve chosen cherry wood and this was much better. The final touch is the trophy plate with engraved information about the plate and my signature. How do you like it?
In this video I’m making carbon prints. I love carbon prints. I think it’s the best that photography as a medium can offer. Of course this is a subjective opinion, but please object only if you have seen a good carbon print on glass – in person. It’s translucent silkiness of carbon prints can not be compared with any dot-on-paper principle printing process. It’s unique.
To fund my work I have to sell these babies. The carbon print on paper is listed HERE and the carbon print of glass is listed HERE.
I have a stupid anecdote to share. We had an attempt of burglary in our house. The attempt failed, since I had my German Shepherd – Mike in the house and that convinced the thief to retreat. After that I thought, shit I’m keeping all my savings in a drawer! I must hide it somewhere. And I did. And the very next day I didn’t remembered where I’ve hide it, now I’m totally without any cash whatsoever. Luckily I have some money on my paypal, so I can fill up the gap and pay the bills, but
imagine how stupid do I feel! Plus I searched the whole house again and again, but without success. Anyway I’m telling you this because I do feel stupid and I want to “enjoy” the suffering so much that I will never repeat it again!
Listed on ebay for 7 days!
Listed on ebay for 5 days!
ON THE WET PLATE COLLODION AT -9C
OK, I’ve done three videos on the subject how to do wet plate collodion at cold temperatures and none of them covers the all aspects. It’s impossible to cover all the aspects because everything needs to be reevaluated. Ditch the timer, you don’t need it. For instance in collodion manuals it is usually written that sensibilization time is 3 minutes for ambrotype. The truth is that the sensibilization time varies on the working conditions, the acidity of the silver bath, the strength of silver bath, the freshness of the silver bath, the level of iodine in silver bath and so on. What I learned from Mark Osterman is to evaluate the sensibilization visually. Do this tests and you will appreciate his wisdom.
Sensitizing
- pour the plate and dip it in silver nitrate bath as you usually do.
- after 40 seconds, in safelight conditions, take the silver-plate out and look at it, then immediately dip it back in siverbath.
- repeat after 90 seconds, 120 seconds, 180 seconds
- observe how the surface of the plate is changing. You will notice the following pattern. At the beginning silver will be on the plate in drops, very oily kind of pattern. Then longer it will stay in the silver-bath, collodion will accept more of the silver-nitrate, more smoother the silver will flow on the surface of the plate.
- when there is no more silver drops on the collodion plate, when silver nitrate flows smoothly, the plate is ready to be taken out.
- In some cases, when I had 9% solution, that was freshly boiled and working in temperature of 25C and I was agitating a bit, the sensibilization times were less then a minute! In times when it’s cold, times might be 6 minutes. Of course judging visually!
Pouring collodion
So this is the most important advice I want to give you. Of course take special attention to poured on plate, if collodion has set. Touch the pouring corner and if finger-print is overflown by collodion again, then wait few more seconds and repeat the test and when you can see that the collodion does not flow anymore, then dip it in silver nitrate. You might make a collodion that has solvents in ratio 65% of ether, 35% of alcohol. It will dry faster, but I work with my usual 50:50 ratio. During summer I do change the ratio to 30 ether : 70 alcohol. Plus more ether makes better ambrotypes, more alcohol makes better negatives. (More in the Collodion Manual)
Developing
I can not tell you the time of development, nobody can, you have to judge it visually. Of course if you’re an avid collodion photographer you do this routinely. If you are not, let me say few words. When you pour developer, observe the plate, count seconds loudly. So when the highlight will start to appear, multiply the time with three. So if the highlights are there already at 4 seconds it will be around 12 seconds. If the highlight will start to appear at 10 seconds, the developing time might be more like 30 seconds. OK, when I say highlight, it can be highlight of a face or a sky. Of course sky will appear much faster then a highlight patch on a nose, so take my advice on seconds approximately.
Developer
At freezing point I usually have 10 gr of ferrosulfate in 100 ml of developer. If it’s hot I reduce it down to 3,5 gr.
Heating plates and chemistry
I don’t recommend it. If you do not have a camper with permanent heating, then I don’t recommended. Because the heating will cool down, so you will not have a steady temperature and your results might be all over the place. My advice is that you do not heat up anything, so you will have steady temperature, which might be -5C, but at least when you will figure it out, you will have steady working conditions! The worst is that you get a good result, but then the temperature of your chemistry has dropped and you will have different results and there are so many variables, that it’s very likely you will get many problems. The only heating I recommend is long underwear and double socks.
Freezing water
In the video I forgot to put table salt in my water. One teaspoon of table salt will prevent water from freezing even at -6C. I’m adding salt even during hot temperatures, because salt will react with silver-nitrate and stop developing process immediately, thus clear blacks.
That’s about it! Enjoy making ambrotypes or better ambroice, a term coined by Scott Anton.
About this
Last but not least, I thank you for supporting my videos, blog posts and my work on general. You can do that by becoming my Patreon, bidding on my ebay auctions, buying work from me directly, taking my workshops or even sending me a tip on paypal directly. My paypal address is borutpeterlin and every cup of tea is welcome. As I confessed I developed a habit – being an artist…
Again I’m making an Ebay auction and again I’m listing prints that are by my opinion perfect! I hope you like the making-of-video and if you think it’s worthy don’t forget to subscribe, like and share.
And as always: TOPSHIT HAPPENS!!!
Funeral of Božena Pelikan
Today is funeral of Božena Pelikan, 95 year old youngest daughter of Josip Pelikan. I was privileged to spend some time with her, listen her advices how to do negative retouching, how to do portrait photography – properly and all the stories that were embedded in the old glass skylight Pelikan Studio. I’m glad I visited her just few days before her death. She had severe dementia, but she remembered me as the one who likes dogs! On her deathbed she was telling me how photography is a noble and nice profession. It has many downsides, but on the end of the day she is happy to be a photographer! This Saturday I have a portrait sessions in this studio, next weekend I have a workshop in the Pelikan studio. Božena lives in photography on!
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Danes je pogreb Božene Pelikan, 95 letne, najmlajše hčere Josipa Pelikana. V čast mi je bilo poslušati njene nasvete kako se retušira steklene negative, kako se dela portretna fotografija, ampak ta spodobna portretna fotografija, in poslušati vse zgodbice prepojene s tem čarobnim steklenim studijom. Vesel sem, da sem jo obiskal par dni pred njeno smrtjo in kljub napredni demenci se me je spomnila, kot tistega, ki ima rad pse. Še na smrtni postelji mi je pripovedovala kako je fotografija lep poklic. Ima veliko slabih strani, a na konec koncev je srečna, da je bila fotografinja! V Studiju Pelikan, to soboto, zopet portretiram in naslednji vikend imam fotografsko delavnico. V fotografiji Božena živi naprej.
Eleven workshops in the next half a year
Dear readers of my blog,
I love teaching and I particularly love teaching collodion photography in the nature, so I came up with this program. There are eleven workshops, but actually I have one more for kids and one more for college students. Please follow THIS LINK and pay particular attention to the Photography Jamboree at the last week of July. It’s open public event, free of charge, based on volunteerism. The purpose of Photography Jamboree is to raise awareness of environmentalism through photography and through direct experience. I sincerely hope that the event will grow into a festival, next year. But that said I can not do it alone, I can do my photography alone, but not the festival of photography. I will do all in my power to gather a group of volunteers and with their generous help make an event that will bring people out of this hectic mad world and experience the peace of eternal forests. Please spread the word.
How to teach children photography as it would be pure magic!
As you probably know I have done many workshops in my life, I even started and running a festival of documentary photography Fotopub for eight years. Even now I still have a workshop at least one every month. This week I had a workshop in elementary school for 8 year olds as a volunteer. Because I had many workshops for kids of different ages and tried different approaches, so in this post I will share with you the most effective way to introduce children to photography.
For children up to age of ten my workshop has three sages. First to present photography as a kind of magic, but a real magic, not a cheap trick! Secondly they have to do the magic by themselves and most importantly to bring something home to show their parents “the proof” they were actually making magic!
Simple? It is! There are many ways to do it, but let me show you how I’m doing it. Firstly I ask if somebody in this room has ever take any photograph? You always want to start with simple question, something that everybody thinks, oh, I can do this! The next one has to be a tricky one. Can you make your own telephone with a camera?
Then I explain that photography in its principle is very simple process, very much like cooking. And we all know that cooking is kind of magic, how else can our mothers transform carrot, that we all know it is inedible and horrible into such a delicious soup?
… and today we will do just that, we will do magic! I hand them “the magic paper”, which is basically plain silver-gelatin photo paper. They lay on it a leaf (they had a homework to bring a leaf) and press it with a piece of glass. Few minutes later they already notice that the paper is turning dark-blue colour. Of course I tell them not to touch it, we will look the lumen print on the very end! (Jill Enfield on Lumen Prints)
Then we go outside and everybody looks trough a view camera and notice that the image is flipped upside down and that although their colleagues all have right hand in the air, through camera it appears that they are waving with left arm! How could that be?
I ask them if somebody has ever seen the inside of a mobile phone or digital camera and always there is one kid (always a boy) that has seen whole lot of wires, cables, chips and other electronic stuff.
Then I ask if they want to see the inside of my camera, the old view bellow camera? Do you want to know the secret why is the projected image on the focusing screen turned up-side down and left to right? And everybody is getting so excited, but then I cover the camera with a black cloth, take away the lens, take away the focusing screen, look under the black cloth and make a silly face, being surprised what have I found out, then I remove the cloth and reach with my hand trough the camera.
They do not understand how is this possible that small mobile phone has so much electronics, whereas my large-format camera has only empty space. I explain them that the magic force in action is called physics! And the other magic force that record the photograph is called chemistry and let me show you how it works. I pull out of my pocket a film holder, we make a group picture. In the classroom I put the film in developing tank and ask one student to pour developer and the other to wipe any leak drops and take care of the timer.
I repeat that the photography is in its essence a very simple process and I take a candy-box and explain that this is a camera. Everybody laughs, but it is real camera obscure. We go in a tent, that is my mobile darkroom, load a pice of ordinary silver-gelatin paper and expose it on the window. We develop an image and sky is black, whereas a tree is white! How can that be, I ask?
We look at “the magic paper” with tree leaf on them on their desks and notice that the paper became dark. Why did it became dark, I ask? They are struggling with the concept that it became dark because it was exposed to the light. Then I ask them if it became dark because the paper was exposed to dark? No, in the classroom, light was turned on all the time. They came to a conclusion that it was actually the light that made the paper go dark! Then I ask them to look out of the window and ask which is brighter the sky or the tree and of course in reality the sky is bright and the tree is dark, whereas in the photograph we made with the candy-box camera obscure is just the opposite. They know the answer why it is so. Now it’s time to learn the new word: A NEGATIVE!
Meanwhile we developed and fixed the film of our group photo. We anxiously open the developing tank and long and behold, the photograph is actually a negative one! I say in amazement, that this can not be their photograph, since there are only black people on the film! Of course they recognise themselves, but I ask them how come they have black faces on the film? One bright kid (usually girl) explains that we are looking the same thing as it was the tree image from the candy-box. Correct, what is the name for it? The negative!
We speed dry the negative with a hairdryer and then we make a contact copy in the darkroom. It is great because the first contact-copy photographs are either too bright or too dark, but then we adjust exposure and the last prints are perfect! Why were those prints too bright? How did we solve it later?
There is another test while exposing. I say I will time 20 seconds with my watch while they count twenty seconds quietly. When they will think the 20 seconds has passed, they say twenty loudly! Then some of them are saying twenty too soon, some are too late, some are actually exact, but the result is not important, it’s important that they have a challenge how long does 20 seconds take. And keep the focus 🙂
After we develop the prints we are having a laugh how we look like. One photograph taken is a serious posture and the second one is a funny one.
At the end they go to their lumen prints that were exposing for an hour and a half and they see a beautiful photogram of a leaf. The photogram is still light sensitive, there is not enough time to fix and dry all of them, so they take the photogram home in their school-book, hidden away from daylight. At home they can show it to parents, but the photogram will eventually become totally dark. It is a magic paper nevertheless!
We finish the workshop with really hard questions for them. Like why is the paper sensitive to white light, but not to red light? I ask them if they can describe the spectrum of a rainbow, but in a correct order. On the end I say that red is at one side of the spectrum, blue and violet is on the other. I say one has more energy then the other, which one has greater energy red or blue colour? After few more suggestive questions we all come to conclusion that red light has less energy then white light, that is why the photo-sensitive paper, or our “magic paper” is not sensitive to red light. Then I ask them if they ever heard about infrared light? No, they have not. We can not see, smell, taste or hear infrared light, but we have a sense to feel it. How can we feel infrared light? (it’s heat of course) I finish with explaining that light is amazing energy and what we see is very very tiny part of the rainbow. I’m ending that there are infrared cameras that can see a person trough a wall! Just like Superman! I told you we will be talking about the real magic!
And this is how my one a half hour workshop for kids ends. That was on Wednesday.
In October and November I had 12 hour (six times 2 hours) long workshop for kids from 11 to 15 years. Our goal was to make 12 images for calendar that will be published in local newspaper Vrelec. I think this post is too long already, so let me just summarise how our workflow differed. First of all there was no analog photography, just digital photography with their cameras. I had one digital SLR with me, so the kid that had to photograph with a phone, suddenly had the best camera in the group. The first lesson was on observing. We walked down to the river and observe a particular stone in the river from one side, the other side and observing how is the scene changing. Where is the sky, how does the background changes, how does perspective changes, etc. From one point of view sones were backed by branches, whereas from the other point of view we did see a perspective of a river stream in first plane, stones in the middle and sky in the back. Trees were on opposite banks, making nice framing.
About this workshop let me tell you that we learned a lot about postprocessing and Lightroom and Photoshop. Because we had only one computer, the others were bored, so I gave them a task to photograph a drop of milk. I will not explain you how have we done it, we did it very simple, that one person triggered the camera, the other person dropped the drop and with the other hand triggered a handheld speed light flash. But HERE are tons of videos on the subject.
TOPSHIT PHOTOGRAPHY blog 