Much to our surprise, yes!For years and years we had no luck at all with pre-coating paper. When we tried the resulting images had been half-strength or the paper exposed itself inside the dark bag. Then quite unexpectedly we had a happy accident. For most occasions there is really no advantage to having paper pre-prepared.…
Introduction Why would you want to make your own developer? There’s plenty of perfectly good developers that you can buy right off the shelf. Well! There’s two good reasons The history of photography is a long one, littered with thousands of chemical recipes that do different things. Many of the popular formulas from years gone…
With all this Doing Science With Cool Kids stuff comes the inevitable question of safety – is Cyanotype safe for children to work with? While the answer is simple, there’s a bit of misinformation out there, compounded by some assumptions. This post will go into the subject in detail.
As I’m sure most of you already know – in February 2016 Fujifilm Japan announced that they would soon cease production of their amazing FP-100C peel-apart polaroid-compatible film. This was the last of the professional instant colour films available, and we’ve found it really hard to say goodbye. FP 100C was the backbone of one of…
cyanotype photogram by Anna Atkins The original Blue Goo is still the most archival of the photographic processes, and nothing could be easier or more versatile. Originally invented by our Main Man Sir John Herschel, deep thinker, tea drinker and dabbler botanist – who was looking for a way to make quick copies of all…
The Art Shed at BigCi When I’m not playing alchemist, I’m an artist (who coincidentally works principally in alchemy) – you can read a bit more about my practice and see some more examples of my work on my website. Recently I got to do one of the most absurdly fun things anyone has managed…
Adelaide has been struck by a particularly nippy winter, with a few sprinklings of snow being spotted, recorded, and promptly played in up in the Adelaide Hills. It can be hard to convince yourself to go play in the dark when it’s a lovely sunny day outside, but winter comes with it’s own set of…
I had no idea what my colleagues were so excited about. While I’d been away on a residency they’d found some new photonerdery to get all tripped out and obsessed on – nothing new on that score! But once I saw the images they were making, well… I had to have a looksee at the…
The other day our friend Fruzsi came to us with a problem – she’s bought a roll of expired colour film for her Diana on eBay and taken it Adventuring in The Big Wide World, only to be told on her return that her local 1-hour photo lab couldn’t process it. “Nonsense”, I said, thinking…
First successful Tintype at the lab, Saturday the 8th of December. We ran a wet plate Collodion workshop in June with Alice Blanch and James Tylor, who popped over from Tasmania to do us the honour. Since then the equipment and an awful lot of silver has all been sitting waiting for idle hands and…
