Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
The study of the aging of the wood of Japanese temples is quite interesting -- especially the cedar of support pillars. My son was doing a little (literature) research on it while I was visiting him in Kyoto several years back. Over the centuries, the wood has increased in strength (but more brittle, I believe -- no free lunch). Totally off topic, but someone mentioned wood...
Drew -- if The Pigment Hunter is still alive and healthy, hopefully we can assume he knows, uses, and teaches the proper handling and use of earth pigments. Uranium toning, anyone? :cool:
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vaughn
Uranium toning, anyone? :cool:
I did uranium prints for several years in the late 1970s, and I'm still alive and kicking! (Still hoping I develop those latent super-powers someday...)
Some modern Japanese field cameras are made from 600-year-old cherry wood from Buddhist monasteries. Usually, when I hear "Japanese", I think "oh, modern high-tech crap". But sometimes, like Uma Thurman, I think to myself, "I need Japanese steel..."
Talk about thread drift...
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
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Originally Posted by
Mark Sawyer
It's all just leading to a "cave paintings are dead, everyone's doing frescoes" argument.
Have you also considered potassium dichromate as a wood stain?
No - please elaborate never heard of this.
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Drew Wiley
Wood pigments and stains? - a complicated subject in its own right, with more variables than most realize. You think you got it right, and a few years down the line, what you stained will look a lot different. Oh my, you are a babe in the woods, Bob. Just like a watercolorist has to know a lot about not only pigments, but the behavior of papers, likewise, colorizing wood requires a knowledge of how any specific variety of wood itself ages and changes color after it's cut and surfaced (unless you're dealing with downright opaque colorants like paint or Black Cat ink). But you will probably have some fun at this, so why not? I'll send you a postcard while you're lingering in some Iranian prison for trying to smuggle out minerals.
I have one of my aunt's master sets of pigments, hand-ground from all over the world. Some of the ingredients are more expensive per ounce than gold, but wouldn't be worth a damn for staining wood. There's a whole industry dedicated to that. I interacted quite a bit with the wood finishes R&D division of Akzo Nobel. They own the finest grinding pigment mills in the world. But do-it yourself-wise, please recognize that numerous natural mineral greens, blues, and true reds can be mildly to seriously toxic, so a dust mask and rubber gloves are a good idea, and careful cleanup afterwards - NO shop vacs!
I do have a big "brick" of paleo red oxide, with finger indentations on one side, and plant fiber brush marks on the other side. At some point over the centuries or millennia, a fire was built over it, so it's as now hard as a rock, essentially a fossil, truly "archival".
I have gone down many wormholes in my career , I like the idea of learning more about pigments than what Epson or Daniel Smith will tell us, I have never been shy about asking somewhat naive questions and following an idea. I do not know where this will lead me, if I can end up making my own pigments for my prints I will be happy, the staining of wood is for my framemaker to study further, she has an art degree and 4 years working at one of Canadas premier frame shops, I think its a worthy area to follow. When in jail please do not try
to commando me out , I would never hear the end of it from you.
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
Vaughn - I had long-term customers who lived in Japan to apprentice under temple builders and learned traditional nail-less woodworking techniques, then returned here. I'm imported a number of specialty tools from Japan for them. At the present, there is still one local dealer specializing in such items, though not the power equipment side of it I dealt with. Another close friend of mine worked with the restoration team in the Forbidden City in Beijing for a couple years learning ancient techniques. But my own start was doing restoration of wood in Julia Morgan buildings here. She employed the same superb craftsmen locally as for Hearst Castle, many from Europe. They knew the properties of wood better than people today, at least in terms of how things age with respect to dimensional stability, fit, and color shift.
I also have a little 100ml bottle of uranyl nitrate on hand, used as an experimental dye mordant. Nothing glows yet. Just for fun, I left a scrap of b&w darkroom paper under it for awhile, and it didn't even fog. The radiation was too weak to pass through the bottle glass.
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
See -- if we built temples instead of making photos, we would not be worrying (in terms of a century or two) about our work needing to be 'saved'.
Or we could work in ceramics. I just have to worry about dropping a piece my son sent me from Japan -- no fading to worry about!
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
Ceramics? That brings up one of the things my friend discovered. The tiles of the Forbidden city take six months to make (in batches, of course). And the type of stucco involved is made similarly. It's all based on intense manual labor. The material uses duck egg albumen binder and either human or horse hair reinforcement, then is layered up and hand polished afterwards. Darn near unbreakable. The palaces and temples use interlocking joinery devoid of glue or any kind of fasteners or nails - kinda a Rubik's Cube concept using extremely solid hardwoods which were floated almost 2000 miles on great barges on the Grand Canal during the Ming Dynasty. But the end result is more earthquake resistant than any kind modern architecture. The Achilles heel is fire. It's amazing what can be done if you've got hundreds of thousands of workers in fear of having their heads lopped off, and willing to work 16 hours a day for a bowl of rice. Nearly as difficult as carbon printing!
Of course, photo printing on ceramics is now routine. But the clue goes way back in time; for instance, how in the Southwest agave vinegar (acetic acid), along with tree sap resist, was used to etch images on clamshell material. Now we can do that much faster because we have CocaCola and Mountain Dew (carbonic acid).
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
My "other career" was in rose hybridizing (suspended shortly after the financial collapse, which brought the ornamental horticulture industry to its knees), and I have about 25 varieties in commerce. Of course, only a few will still be around in 50 years, but there are two that are likely to be grown in people's gardens for at least the next 50-100 years. One may in fact be my legacy, and will far outlive any work I ever did making photographs; I'm sure all of that will be forgotten five seconds after I'm dead.
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
I think of two extremes in the fine-art world: Ansel Adams and Brett Weston. Adams gave his archive to Arizona State with the idea that advanced students could use his negatives with new printing technology etc etc. Weston burned all his negatives and left us only the prints he had made. I will probably donate some to our County Historical Society. Giving my prints to friends etc is a good idea. I do have a few historically significant photos where prints and negatives should stay together.
Re: What will happen to your negatives in "the end"?
I imagine Adams would be rolling over in his grave by now, regretting he didn't burn his own negatives, were it not for the fact all the ensuing licensed reproductions of his work have attempted to faithfully replicate his own manner of rendering those images, and have not resorted to something goofy. Otherwise, who would ever pay for something to hang on their walls, or enjoy in a book. Students can always go make their own negatives. Serious pros are the ones doing the press reproductions, along with Alan Ross making actual prints from some of the original negs, based on how AA specifically coached him to do it. Borrowing from his own analogy, there's no need for a Beethoven score to be performed by a junior high marching band. If we want Beethoven to roll over in his grave, at least let Chuck Berry cause it.