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Cyanotype on Glass, take one

10/9/2020

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A few weeks ago I came across a few images of cyanotype done on glass. They were beautiful, stunning images, and the idea set off a few weeks of research. how to get the chemistry to stick without clouding the glass, how to mix it, and apply it. I ordered equipment, calculated proportions, and applied the chemistry to my first piece of glass.

and promptly broke my brand new graduated cylinder trying to drain the excess chemistry. After weeks of preparation, I got 1 usable piece of glass.


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This side by side comparison using the same negative, on paper vs glass backed with paper shows pretty strongly the difference in quality. admittedly, i probably could have stood to lengthen the exposure a little more, I used a uv lamp for the glass while the paper was done in sunlight, but the smoothness and lack of grainy texture on the glass makes this a very successful attempt in my eyes.

That said, I made several mistakes, and learned from them. My next attempt, which may not be for a while as I need to replace my equipment with more suitable materials, will be better. I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you will too. 
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A Renewed Madness

3/13/2019

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I have of late, wherefore, I know not, experienced a rebirth of my creative endeavors. Ideas seem to flow through my mind like water, and where once I scrambled for purchase on any idea I could find, now, I almost have too many to keep up with.

For a start, I am writing again. I've been pouring hours into a fiction piece, and enjoying my results. i know this site is focused more on my photography, but I feel like this is the point where the re-awakening started, and so bears mentioning.

On a more photographic bent, I had a breakthrough idea a few weeks back, a realization that alternative process photo printing might hold the key to achieving the look I wanted for a long tabled concept for a series of photos. Armed with this idea, and a gnawing desire to reacquaint myself with alt process printing, I went scrolling through old photos on my hard drive looking for worthy candidates for practice, and ordered a Cyanotype kit.


I started with some photos of my trip to Israel last spring. I don't have a proper photo printer, so I'm using a laser printer to produce paper negatives, then oiling the paper to make it translucent. The results are passable, a good start. It's been so long since I've been able to do cyanotypes I'm having to reteach myself a lot about technique, but in doing so I'm having new ideas of how to make better use of the process, the above images are only a place to start. I also built a print frame, it's rough, kind of ugly in that regard, but it works. It does exactly what I need it to.
I've also purchased a pair of studio lights. While it's only two so far, meaning I'm limited to two point lighting, it's a start, and they'll allow me to shoot comfortably into the evenings. I have people I'm talking to about modeling for projects starting immediately and going through the summer.

This is just one step along the way. I'm planning to use this time to grow, re-familiarize myself with the techniques and equipment. Once I've grown comfortable with my cyanotypes again, my next step will be gum bichromate. That's the tool of choice for the project that launched this rediscovery of my love for the camera. Being able to print full color, with the hazy, textural quality of a painting, and the not quite photo-memisis that I think will help me pull off my desired project.

In the meantime, you all get to watch along as I re-explore the joys of this process, and rediscover my passion for the work.
​
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Stellar-photography

9/29/2017

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A few weeks ago I found myself wrapped up in research on doing star photography. It was something I'd always assumed I'd need a telescope to get into. Learning that a telescope was not actually necessary, and having recently moved out of the city, so I could actually see stars again at night,  I set out to find a clear night when I could try my hand at it. Last night, the perfect convergence of a night I wasn't working and the sky was clear happened, and I headed to a local nature trail where I hoped to get a few shots before my battery died (I'd accidentally left my camera on after a photo excursion a few weeks ago). Now, I'm looking forward to another clear night to try again with what I learned from this first trial run. 
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A Long Time Coming

10/28/2016

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It's been a while since I've posted anything here, partially because I haven't really felt like I had anything worth posting. I've done little artistic work since college, and a great deal of regular, mundane work to pay my bills. I do have a few ongoing projects, but they're slowly being developed. I've opted to post the first few images from my new series "Broken Lives" partially because it's been so long since I put up new work, and partially in the hopes that having a few images from the series up will encourage me to work on it more often. 
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Graduation

5/13/2012

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As of noon yesterday, I have Graduated from college with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Photography. Spent some time with my family both before and after graduation, and once they were gone, my lovely fiancee Liz proposed a photo excursion. We divided out town in half and each wandered off into our half of the town, setting out an hour before golden hour was scheduled to start. (For those who don't know, Golden hour is the half hour to an hour before sunset when the lighting takes on a warm golden color)
The best results of that photo walk are posted
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New year, New Direction.

1/9/2012

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A great deal has happened over the past month. It’s interesting to be entering what everyone calls the “real world” at new years. Getting myself settled into my new routine feels like I’m setting up a new years resolution, when really I’m just setting up my life after school. I’ve graduated from college, purchased my own large format camera, and been working on setting up an approximation of a darkroom set up in my apartment. There have been a few challenges, among them figuring out how to get silver nitrate stains off bathroom walls (bleach, as it turns out, works wonderfully for this.)

I’ve started getting more hours at work now that I’m out of school. I’m still part time, but I’m a less poor part time laborer. This suits me just fine as it leaves me plenty of time for writing, photography, and gaming. I’ve been working on a few projects on the writing front, but I’ve been pretty inactive since finals. I picked up bookbinding for fun, and have a few nice results. Haven’t shot much since finals, but I’ll be getting back to that soon, now that things have settled down somewhat after the holidays.

One of my goals is to start posting on here more often, including updates on my life, what I’m working on at the time, and photos of my developing equipment collection. To that end, here are a few photos of things I’ve been working on:

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This is my latest darling, a Calumet 4x5 view camera. I purchased the lens separately, built the lens board, and put it all in working order. It’s all metal meaning it's heavy, but sturdy. It’s actually too heavy for my tripod, as when I put it on the tripod it bent the head of the tripod. (it should be noted I have a cheap plastic tripod that I’ve been using for years with smaller cameras, and was never intended for a camera of this size.)

This camera hasn’t received a name yet, but I’m open to suggestions.

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"Bell Book and Candle" the first successful tintype made with the new camera. This one was lit entirely by floor and table lamps, shot in the middle of the night Christmas Eve. It took several hours to get the exposure right, and I finally settled on a 20 min exposure time at f4.5. I varnished the plate the next morning, framed it Christmas night, and gave it away as part of a Yankee Swap the next day with my Fiancée’s family. 

We matted it in a classic decorative Matte my Fiancée made and Tea stained that just happened to crop in the corners enough to cover that dark shadow. She made the matte before the plate was finished, and I was thrilled when I saw how it fit. 


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I've been working on building a role-playing game system on and off for a few months now. The basic mechanics are all worked out at this point, but I realized that in order to play test this game I would need a world to play in, and that most game systems that have a distinctive flavor also come with a well developed setting for gamers to use. To that end, I've begun building an appropriate setting to showcase my system. This is the world map I made a few days back. Over the next few weeks I'll be writing profiles on each of these nations and various organizations that are influential in this world, as well as a bit of the history of the world.


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As I mentioned above, I’ve taken up bookbinding. I saw a tutorial about it online a few weeks back and thought about all the scrap matte board I had lying around after cutting windows for my photographs, and decided I’d try my hand at using the scraps for book covers. My fiancée volunteered some scrap fabric left over from old projects, and fabric pieces she’d been given but decided not to use, and I started putting together books. I then took old prints, misprints, and various other photographs I didn’t want to keep as such, and began looking for things that would make interesting inside covers. In this case, I used two contact prints on RC paper, made off 4x5 negatives I shot a few years ago.


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He says, "the trouble with artists is..."

11/1/2011

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I would like to take this opportunity to discuss a problem I’ve been observing with the arts community in general, and my college more specifically. Accessibility.  Art has in many ways become something that can only be appreciated by other artists. I see work on a regular basis that requires an education in art history to even begin to understand because it involves so many allusions to former concepts, ideals and movements within the art world. One cannot simply make an image anymore without someone else interjecting that it would be more conceptually interesting if done in the style of an art movement that died 40+ years ago. There are so many works that you have to understand the ideology of an entire movement in order to understand, and the majority of the population lacks the time, interest, and energy to educate themselves about the history of artistic movements.

What’s worse, is that I’m beginning to suspect that this problem is symptomatic of an art education. Because we know about these movements, we want to play off their ideas, forgetting that other people don’t know about them. There was a time when art was current and relevant without requiring that the viewer be particularly well educated to understand it. This was because the art referenced contemporary subjects rather than historical or literary figures from a century before. Artists have become so wrapped up in their own conversation that they have stopped inviting laymen to engage in their dialog. We wonder about the shrinking market for artwork, but we’re the ones responsible for alienating the vast portion of the marketplace.

I see writers everyday that through their studies have lost their love of reading. Who admit that they can’t just pick up a book and get lost in the story anymore. I see artists who when they look at a piece of new art immediately begin analyzing it before they have a chance to experience and explore a human reaction to it. I posit that if we want our work to be relevant to the general population, we must first return to being a part of that population again. We must remember what first inspired us, what filled us with wonder when we were part of that huddled mass of unenlightened looking up at the products of the arts and gasping in awe at what we saw. We need to remember the visceral reaction we first experienced when viewing grand oil paintings, or reading Fantasy and Science fiction books. We need to remember the wonder of turning the pages to find out what happens next, and the experience of spending a month reading a good book because we don’t want it to be over.

We must remember, and we must produce work that is accessible at that level, then get it in front of as many eyes as possible. This is how we can inspire the world to pay attention to the arts again, not by shocking them but by inspiring them. We don’t need to confuse, confound, educate or indoctrinate them. We need to inspire them, fill them with wonder and amazement and make them want to educate themselves. 

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    Author

    Kenneth Belsito is a photographer, and writer, with a  B.A. in Creative Writing and Photography, currently studying business.

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