Water Lens Again... Floating negs...

[Annie M.]

Last night big storm... no power... dinner by candle light reach across the table for the salad dressing... lightbulb moment (actually... more of a candle light moment).

I know my little forays into the world of the physics of light and lenses can be tedious for some but please be patient and help me figure out how to make an oil/water lens for my enlarger.

Last night I ended up floating negatives of ocean waves on salad dressing... oil & vinegar... and projecting them onto the ceiling with a flashlight & magnifying glass. The negative stays suspended in the oil and will not sink down into the water... gentle movement of the water creates the most exqusite light effects within the wave images... seeing my waves projected life size and flowing with light 20 feet in the air above me was sublime.

Now I would like to replicate this in the darkroom so I can print similar images. So I am wondering how to do this. The floating of the negative is essential and easy enough on the oil... but how can I get the image to focus down to a size that can be printed on photographic paper... what is required... I have been trying this morning using the enlarger and a beaker with the neg/oil/water mix but I can not get it to focus on the paper... any suggestions would be helpful as I think this may be as close as I can get to photographing waves with water.

Cheers and thanks... Annie

[Peter K]

Hi Annie,
glass trays with flat bottoms where use in the field of graphic arts. Illuminated from the top and placed on photographic paper you will get all this optical phenomenons on the print. Don't forget the herbs in the dressing ;-)

Peter K

[Annie M.]

Peter... it would certainly work floating a large neg on a thin layer of oil and water in a flat dish if the final image was to be a 'soft' contact image... my problem is getting the image enlarged and focused in tandem with the optical phenomenon... currently I am floating the neg in a 2 inch oil/water mix...

in-a-gadda-da-vita..... Annie

[Ash]

why don't you use a mirror at 45 degrees and project it onto a page pinned (or taped or vacuumed) onto the wall?

[Peter K]

Annie,
cut a hole in the size of the tray in a piece of plywood, than illuminate the tray from the top and put a camera under the tray. Enlarge the negative to the size you need.
Have fun
Peter K

[ic-racer]

This reminds me somewhat of Adam Fuss. He made photograms of objects, rabbits, snakes, babies, in water. He used Cibachrome paper (makes a positive) and I suspect he used a strobe for lighting (to freeze the patterns in the water). So you could try inverting your system so the light is on top and the image is projected down onto the photographic paper. In some of his work the object is in contact with the paper (so no need for glass-bottomed tray).

Image (c) Adam Fuss

[Paul Metcalf]

... gentle movement of the water creates the most exqusite light effects within the wave images... You won't see this at all after you've frozen the image in time with a fast exposure, or it will have that misty/foggy look you get with long exposures:confused:

[Annie M.]

Peter... your method would be perfect with a positive dupe of the negative... I just realized that the light play in the water would be printing out black on to the photographic paper so it seems best to go to film first as you suggested ... most importantly the floating would still be happeining

Ash... would the image be focused?

Paul... interestingly enough the light in the water layer usually moves at a different rate (more kinetic) than the negative floating in the oil so there is a possibility for an interesting duplicity of light projection

ic-racer... Adam Fuss image of the snake in blue water... pure beauty!

.... I'll keep playing with it ... something is bound to happed

[Struan Gray]

Sounds perfect for an installation.

[katie cooke]

Have you seen Susan Derges' work? http://www.inglebygallery.com/artistsDetail.php?id=34 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Derges
She works with large photographic paper in rivers, by moonlight...

[Annie M.]

Katie! Katie! Katie!

Oh my heaven... I had never seen any of her work and there in her simple eloquent images is everything I had been struggling with the last few weeks... right down to the the raindrops... the syncronicity in the images is uncanny... I absolutely adore these little winks from the universe.

Thank you so much for this... if you are ever near my beach let me know we can lay paper in the tidepools and the night sea waves...

...Annie