U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: facial tanners for UV light?

Re: facial tanners for UV light?



Hi Gregg, Jean . . .

I bought one of those Edwards light boxes the first year he made them, and it was incredibly cheap. I'm sure he made absolutely no money on them, if you take into consideration his labor costs. After a while, it was too small, so Peter make me another one, half- heartedly following the way that one had been built, but much bigger and with a lot of design changes. The most difficult part, at the time, was finding the right light bulbs.

That one worked for a while, and then I got an amazing deal on a vacuum print frame a couple of years ago-- from a guy in Wilmington who was teaching alt photo processes. He didn't get many takers in his classes, so eventually just shut down his "school." He sold everything, and one of the last pieces to go was this huge vacuum print frame. I saw it listed somewhere, called him up, and he named a price, and I named another price, much cheaper, and he took it-- as long as I came and picked it up. I think he was just so happy to be rid of it, he didn't care about the price. It is ridiculously heavy and does take up space, deserving a room of its own, but once I started using it-- I just love it. It's amazing. I can't believe I waited so long to get one.

Anyway, if you want to use any of my old light boxes, let me know; before you go and make one, though, keep your eye out for a vacuum print frame. You can probably find them used (I would think), and they will be more expensive-- but well worth every penny, in my opinion.

When I started doing alt processes, years ago, I did just print in the sun. Not as consistently reliable, but worked well-- especially here in the South.

Diana


On Mar 3, 2008, at 7:53 AM, Gregg Kemp wrote:

Wow! Its great to read your words again, Jean. It has been a while.

And I think I will take your advice and buy the facial tanner for now. I'm tracking a couple on eBay. I'm excited about making more cyanotypes and have ordered chemicals for VDB. I think that making my own UV light source right now would slow me down a bit. But I also suspect I'll start building one soon in order to make larger prints (in time).

Its really nice to hear from you and I'm looking forward to staying in touch with you.

- Gregg

On Mar 3, 2008, at 6:01 AM, Jean Daubas wrote:

Hi Gregg !

So nice to meet you again on this list !
[sorry for adding a very personal issue but, for those who are not familiar with the magics of tiny holes, I must say that Gregg and I were belonging to this incredible international team of mad pinholists who invented and founded the WPPD, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, now a major annual event. That was ... 7 years ago (2001). And Diana Bloomfield, so active on our alt process list, was also one of these crazy pinholists ! And last year, as a curator of a major International Camera Obscura exhibit in Besançon (France), I had the luck to hang wonderful colour pinholes prints from Gregg...

Now back to the subject : Gregg, I really encourage you to use this kind of facial tanners which you may find at low prices on e- bay ; it will be very useful for you as a starter equipment (cheap, constant, easy to use, lightweight, transportable and adapted for small formats as 8x 10 or A4 if you have a printing frame for these formats).
Later, when you really get addicted to alt processes, you will probably wish to buy (so expensive !) or to buil your own UV Light bank. That's exactly what I'm doing now, building a new UV source with 8 x 24 " tubes (plans inspired from various ressources :
http://shutterbug.com/techniques/lighting/0900sb_howto/

http://www.eepjon.com/Ubldit.htm and http://www.eepjon.com/ faquv.htm Some tiime ago, you could find on this site an excellent description with plans and cutting list but it seems that Jon Edwards has now suppressed these pages. So, if you are interested , Gregg, just tell me off-list and I'll send you these documents.

And, as usual, my reference to Judy's unique World Journal of Post-Factory Photography where I found a great variety of designs and ideas for building (#6).

I bought my own "facial tanner" on e-bay 4 years ago and still use it with a lot of satisfaction for cyanotypes, argyrotypes and gum. Though, never tried to tan my face ;-). The model is :
"Original Philips UVA" Uv type 3 with 4 x tubes Philips TL 29D 16 / 09 N

Hope it helps,
Cheers from france,
Jean